connexio.dk

GoMore does it for transportation, Airbnb does it for accommodation, and for freelancers and small business owners, there are coworking spaces where meeting rooms and offices can be rented as needed.

The sharing economy - or shared service concepts - is constantly evolving, helped by technologies that make it easier and easier to share, book and pay for/get paid for services. In addition, the sharing economy rhymes with the increasing global focus on sustainability.  

The rationale is that you don't need your own car when you only need to drive twice a month and you can easily and effortlessly subscribe to a car share. You don't need your own office if you can book a presentable meeting room with ice water, coffee and wifi during the hours you have a customer visit, etc.

The sharing economy approach already exists in business, but it's often called something else. For example, in my industry - customer service - we offer our customers that they only pay for the service they need. Quite literally and on a per-minute basis. The same principle as car sharing or a meeting room in a shared office space.

In this way, our customers are able to effortlessly scale their customer service task according to current needs. Scaling up can be done during periods of increased sales such as Black Friday, summer sales and Christmas shopping, extra staffing may be needed at odd hours as customers shop online around the clock, and companies may also need to service customers in languages other than Danish. 

The point is that it can also be scaled down effortlessly - making the cost variable for the company. This is important for two reasons in particular. Firstly, the company gets an optimal correlation between the cost of the service and the need for it. Secondly, employees are released from functions where their skills are not optimally utilized. Resources that can be used to drive growth rather than being tied up in either inefficient multifunctionality or inefficient waiting for a customer inquiry.

The latter is crucial right now, as the Danish business community and labor market are really starting to recover from corona, and all forecasts and key figures point to growth and momentum. A potential growth adventure where one of the biggest bottlenecks, according to DI, will be a shortage of employees. A shortage that DI fears could, in the worst case scenario, jeopardize the eminent restructuring efforts of Danish companies because Danish businesses do not have enough employees to stay on the growth track and secure export orders abroad.  

Labor shortages can be solved with political reforms or by importing labor from abroad, but neither addresses the problem here and now, when the need is there. Therefore, it's important to look at how we can best utilize the resources of our current employees, and shared service concepts across a wide range of functions can be part of the solution.

Just as your car doesn't need to be parked in the garage 90% of the time, employees don't need to be parked in functions where there is a high demand at peak times but not much else to do. This is neither profitable, long-term nor value-creating.

The potential is huge for those companies that embrace the development and choose a sharing economy approach to employee resources and solving functions in shared service concepts - because they gain access to obvious potential for optimization and for freeing up resources that can be used for growth and development. Who will be first?