Sorry We Missed You
I caught Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You on the weekend. The film, based on interviews with actual delivery drivers, is a heavy look at the nature of work in the gig economy.
Ricky, a former building worker who lost his business and chance of a mortgage in the 2008 GFC and struggles to make ends meet from then on, takes up a contract delivery driver role with a Newcastle-based parcel delivery service. Management, in the form of the imposing, unforgiving Maloney, sells the job to Ricky through its “flexibility”. Ricky can pick and choose when he works. Ricky works the long hours and consistently meets his performance measures.
Meanwhile Ricky’s wife, Abbie, is a contract nurse and home carer, working 12-15 hour days. Abbie takes the bus to attend to each of her clients, after being persuaded by Ricky to sells her car so he can afford a van to take the “flexible” delivery job.
Ricky and Abbie have two children and are juggling the everyday stresses of life - finances and being “good parents”. Their teenage son Sebastian is spiralling out of the control, skipping school, defacing public property and shoplifting. Mature beyond her years, little Liza, their daughter, spends her time trying to keep her brother out of trouble, hoping for one happy family.
The stress of Ricky’s job and his less than understanding manager, Maloney, lead to Ricky not being physically or mentally present at home, seeking comfort in alcohol and resolving conflict by yelling at the entire household. Ricky tries to discuss his “personal” issues with Maloney, who ignores this and demands Ricky get back to work.
As tensions escalate, Ricky is mugged on the job while urinating in a bottle in the back of his van so as to not risk his performance targets. The parcels from his van are stolen, he sustains serious injuries and his “gun” – a handheld GPS tracker issued daily by Maloney and used to measure performance targets – is destroyed. While awaiting his scan results in the busy Emergency ward with Abbie, Maloney calls Ricky advising he had not met his performance targets, would need to cover the costs of the stolen goods and the broken gun and organise a replacement driver for his shifts. Battered and bruised, physically and mentally, and against his families wishes, Ricky returns to work the next day.
Needless to say we exited the cinema feeling flat. It was heavy viewing for a Saturday afternoon. We discussed how common this must be in today’s world, the pressures of work and home intertwining, and managers who may not be aware of, or know how to deal with, employees’ personal issues that are impacting their professional performance.
The film left me with more questions than answers. Here I’ll focus on the one that resonated most: how are we safely managing the evolution of the gig economy?
The gig economy.
The “gig economy” is where employees operate in a market type system, where temporary positions are common and organisations contract independent workers for short-term engagement, e.g. freelancing and independent contracting. The majority of those working in the gig economy are Generation Y, who may be less motivated to live the nine to five regime.
With 32% of the Australian workforce freelancing between 2014 and 2015, it is estimated that by 2020 40% of the workforce will be undertaking freelance work. I wonder what the percentage will be in 2030, and do we have adequate governance around the management and welfare of independent contractors?
As a consumer, I relish the benefits of the gig economy: online shopping being delivered to my door the same day I ordered it, or even within the hour if I choose to pay a small fee; food from my favourite restaurants delivered to my door; someone to pick up my clothes, dry clean them and return them the next day . . . the list is almost endless. You name a service and I’m sure it exists.
For society, the gig economy is great too. It has created low skill-based jobs with extremely flexible hours.
Is it really a good gig?
Sorry We Missed You made me stop and consider the impact on those performing the services. Those performing these jobs are freelancing or on short term engagements, always chasing the next job, while still focussing on meeting performance targets. Often I hear, when I get out of a ride sharing service, “make sure you give me five stars!”
When I think about ride sharing services, I immediately think about the hours (times of day and duration) these people were working. Who monitors them to ensure fatigue doesn’t play a factor? Some people are working nine to five jobs and then driving in the evenings.
Recently, as a passenger in a ride share vehicle, the driver told me they had been driving for 12 hours straight, informing me that they had “worked around the system” driving with one provided for six hours, and then driving six hours for another (some ride sharing providers disable their application once a driver has been driving for a certain period of time). It was 6:30am and a chilly 2 degrees. The driver had the window down (presumably to keep himself awake), I was a little concerned that I would make it to my destination in one piece. I wondered who really knew how many hours he had been driving, and if there was an accident, had his employers really covered their duty of care? When I asked the driver why he was working so many hours, he explained to me how little he actually made from a trip once fuel, insurance, wear and tear and the 15-30% tariff paid to the service provider whom he was engaged by was factored in.
I thought back to another situation, a few weeks ago on a Sunday night, we had our dry cleaning delivered. The delivery driver drove into our front gate. Luckily the damage to his car and our gate was minimal. Who was this reported to? How does the company monitor incidents like this? Is this the first time it has happened? Most importantly, who checks in with the delivery driver to make sure he is okay? How does the company learn from this, or does it not matter because they are short term, freelancing employees?
Is regulation required?
Rather than waiting for the industry to spin out of control with people suffering fatigue and burn out issues, ensuring that independent contractors are fit for work, is there a need for an independent auditor/regulator for these services?
Should the service providing organisations who predominantly comprise of independent contractors be required to register with the regulator, and should independent contractors wishing to work for service providers be “accredited” with the regulator, logging the hours worked with each provider to enable full transparency?
If we think back to Ricky, a regulator may have been able to see the excessive hours Ricky was working, and additionally Ricky may have been able to report Maloney’s dismissive behaviour.
Maloney made it very clear to Ricky, that as a self-employee he was to deal with his own personal issues. All Maloney cared about was Ricky hitting the targets so that Maloney looked like a superstar. If only Maloney recognised that if he supported Ricky with his personal issues, he may have been able to meet the performance targets. Instead, Ricky failed his family, which impacted his work, his own personal health and his performance targets.
Measuring care.
At your workplace, are your frontline leaders and managers performance targets specific to operational aspects of the business, or are there empathy targets based around the employee experience? Put more boldly, if the organisation was asked, does your manager care about you, what would the performance rating be? If we were to ask this question to independent contractors in the gig economy, what would their response be?