EMERGING TECHNOLOGY TO LEVERAGE THE GIG ECONOMY

BY: MIKE POPADAK

Speed is an expectation in virtually every area of life. For commercial real estate management, instant visual verification of properties can increase productivity and help those who service or manage buildings to implement proactive plans. But retrieving this information can be challenging, especially when managing or servicing multi-sites across the country. Enter the gig economy.

In the gig economy, employers contract freelancers to complete temporary jobs as opposed to utilizing internal resources or hiring full-time employees. According to Statista.com, more than one-third of U.S. workers participate in this labor market. It is no surprise that IT, retail, health care, and media industries heavily rely on gig workers. But what you may not know is that gig workers have a growing presence in the facility and property management industry. In fact, it is among the top eight industries poised for disruption by on-demand workers according to WorkMarket, Inc.

How Commercial Real Estate Professionals are Working the Gig Economy:

Those who work in property management are used to adapting to change. But using technology that provides quicker and more efficient way to gather insights, makes it that much easier to adapt. The gig economy is a game changer for commercial real estate professionals, especially in the areas of talent and speed.

So how does it work? Similar to how companies like Uber or DoorDash operate, but instead of giving a ride or delivering food, crowdsourcing technology is used to connect companies with professional talent and trade workers looking for shortterm positions or local consumers searching for on-demand assignments within the commercial building management industry.

Talent

Even before the spike of remote work, industry professionals have often felt the burden of being spread thin on available resources in the field as well as the expense it takes to send teams where they are needed. To be effective, commercial real estate professionals need multiple productive teams who are readily available at a moment’s notice. Hiring gig talent helps fill the gap. And not only do gig workers provide help when it is needed, but they also come with fresh perspective. Oftentimes, a different outlook can help business owners and property managers become more adept at delivering advice, insights, and new services to improve customer experience and the bottom line. Corporate also wins by saving on employment-related expenses such as payroll tax, health insurance premiums, and other overhead expenses.

Leveraging Gig Talent

If you are like most business owners or property managers, you are familiar with hiring extra workers to meet intermittent high demand in areas such as cleaning or security. Gig workers are no different; only now—with dedicated freelancing platforms, it has become easier to procure highly specialized talent. Sites such as upwork.com and freelancer.com can source virtual assistants to manage tenant relations or field emergency calls, perform data entry, or accounting tasks; temporary labor to augment the team; or project managers to coordinate jobs and help free up your frontline internal resources. There is no doubt a wide range of gig talent is available to improve day-to-day operations. But the gig economy can also help facility managers increase response time and make data-driven decisions.

Speed

As a commercial real estate professional, you hear it often: “I need it now.”

Leveraging the gig economy to satisfy speed requirements puts control back in your hands to create real-time impact.

Augmented reality (AR) is an emerging technology that is gaining momentum in the facility management space. Imagine a facility has experienced some sort of control failure on a piece of equipment. A master technician located halfway across the country can slip on AR glasses to inspect the system and troubleshoot the problem without ever having to step foot on site. Sounds too good to be true, but it is possible with the right setup.

Leveraging Gig Efficiency

The gig economy makes it faster and more affordable than ever to monitor quality control, risk mitigation, contract compliance, service verification, and more from anywhere in the world. Regardless of if a building owner, manager, or service provider needs eyes on one site or an entire portfolio of more than 10,000 sites, the gig economy makes it possible to see virtually every property within minutes of the request, regardless how remote.

Here are a few ways the commercial real-estate industry can leverage visual verification technology and the gig economy to improve efficiencies.

Track progress – Monitor project or vendor progress of any service on one or multiple sites.

Monthly audits – Request survey data to proactively address repair and maintenance issues.

Proof-of-presence – Request photos to satisfy proof-ofpresence requirements and verify workmanship. Risk Mitigation – Request photos of areas that have resulted in liabilities for speedy resolution and future prevention.

Rollouts – Monitor milestones with photos and video of a variety of trades.

Prioritization – Rank repairs based on location and severity of defect with photos that identify time and location.

Budgeting – Make well-informed decisions based on what is observed.

Ultimately, gigs are not just for ridesharing or e-commerce delivery, there is a growing need and demand for the gig economy in the world of property management. And just as your job requires flexibility, so does the mindset of the industry when it comes to outsourcing for talent and speed requirements. The workers and the technology are there. Now it’s up to you. The right people in the right places, along with speedy resolutions, is the key to satisfying tenants and customers as well as adding value to the overall facility and brand experience.

About the Author

Mike Popadak is the active CEO and CoFounder of iVueit, an innovative platform connecting the Facility Management professionals to an On-Demand workforce of mobile app users dedicated to site audits and data collection nationwide. Mike has nearly 20 years experience in interior brand execution and exterior property maintenance and has managed client relationships with national retailers across the country.

ExaMPLES OF THE GIG ECONOMY AT WORK

Fiver is a service that allows users to find freelancers to complete a variety of work. From video animation to creating chat bot for your website, Fiver connects freelancers with business that need their services. Fiver includes offerings for services that could help a property professional with their web presence, their organizations’s digital marketing or even proofreading. TaskRabbit is for those needing a small job done quickly. Similar to Uber, users request help through TaskRabbit and those available and qualified can pick up the job. This could rnage from putting together office furniture to mounting a TV in the conference room. This service can be a great tool to use for odd jobs especially if a vendor is unavailable. Upwork is a place for users to find freelancers and independant professionals to complete different jobs for their organization. Their pool of qualified freelancers can complete a variety of tasks such as building a landing page or designing an email template for your company. When users post a job, they recieve qualified proposals and can select the right person for the job.