Eliminating employees
Deep breaths, everyone. We’re about to chat about an unpopular topic. Although to be fair it’s only unpopular with employees. Mention it to business owners and their eyes get all wide with glee at the possibility of eliminating employees. Highlighting the emerging staff-free movement in our last article seems to have touched a nerve. Many pooh-poohed it’s even possible so here’s just a few super clever local businesses doing the staff-free ‘thang’ successfully (shared with their consent):
Outsourcing
Way back when outsourcing first became a thing, a couple of savvy accountants decided to give it a go. They shut up shop, fired their staff and now work from home earning well over a million dollars each year. They achieve this by charging customers full price but the work is done cheaply by contractors in India. (Incidentally, we don’t condone this - our trials found the quality was abysmal and high risk for you).
Boutique business models
We’ve all heard about the big hotel chains struggling to breakeven. In contrast, a micro hotel in the South Island is so incredibly popular that it even turned Oprah away. The owners say the successful business model is intentionally small with hardly any staff, to retain it’s exclusivity and those eyewatering prices.
Artificial Intel
One of New Zealand’s leading architecture firms often vents to us about there only being ten years left in the traditional architecture business model. A.I. is replacing core chunks of staff work and often does it better. Take for example, the A.I. software which assesses compliance with the building codes more efficiently than any employee.
Contractors + Tech
There’s nothing new about using contractors, instead of employees, but we have a cracker of a story to share. It’s about the a slightly nerdy lady from down south who sought us out years ago with wild ideas about getting rid of classrooms to teach the world online. She hires contractors for anything techy but for the most part it’s just her working from home with the kids and (wait for it) often earning half a million per month.
It works because technology achieves global customer reach without employees. Technology is starting to feel more like the terminator than Schwarzenegger ever did; the employee terminator:
restaurants use order-at-table-apps to kill off staff
supermarkets, gas stations and airports eliminate staff with self-check
bank tellers are branches are being exterminated
there’s even robotic in-home nursing
school marking can be done by A.I. instead of teachers
agricultural weeding is moving to A.I. powered laser-weeding units
data-entry clerks & secretaries have gone the way of the Moa (extinct)
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