Google relies on contract workers. But there’s a much better way to do it. Marcel Dietsch Follow Aug 14, 2018 · Unlisted

According to a recent Bloomberg article, the number of contractors working for Google exceeded the number of full-time employees for the first time in its history. We believe that blockchain-powered systems offer a way forward to empower contract — or so-called freelance — workers.

But first, let’s take a step back and consider what this shift toward freelancing means for the global workforce.

Freelancing has been the dominant trend in past decade, and there are no signs of it slowing down. In fact, half of the working population in the United States is expected to freelance by 2027.

This presents a significant shift toward a new relationship between workers and how they work — and hopefully it’s a positive shift for the world’s workforce. But that’s still to be determined, and it depends on a variety of factors, including whether freelancers can manage to earn the same respect and benefits as they would have were they working as full-time employees.

Indeed, the key areas that need to be considered when examining the shift toward freelancing concern security and benefits — both monetary and personal — that this shift brings with it.

While people might think that freelancing means nice beaches and freedom, the reality is often rather different and far less glamorous.

Photo by Trinity Treft on Unsplash.

Several Google contractors recently reported that they were often viewed as inferior by their full-time counterparts, even though they do the exact same work. The freelance group was also trusted with less important tasks, primarily as a result of their “second-class” status.

Moreover, the benefits given to most contract workers are significantly less attractive than those afforded to full-time employees. What’s more, the former are also prohibited from entering certain facilities that are available for the latter.

Some contractors have also found that the security of their position was not nearly as watertight as they would like; many have been let go without a prior notice or an exit interview. The feeling of inferiority in a team -stemming from unequal treatment- inhibits the team’s productivity; this has been proven time and time again.

The issues mentioned above are indeed alarming and are likely not exclusive to Google. In this radically changing work environment, these issues need to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Covee provides a viable solution

Covee is motivated to solve the problems encountered in a collaborative work environment. With our advanced incentive design, we have the capacity to overcome the biggest hurdles that remote collaboration faces today.

With our blockchain-powered mechanisms, we are solving some of the most vexing problems currently plaguing freelancing in truly revolutionary ways.

First, Covee ensures the commitment of team members to project work through a staking mechanism, forcing the participants to have “skin in the game.” In a nutshell, every applicant to a role in a project has to deposit a predetermined amount of tokens to show his or her commitment to the job.

If they aren’t selected for a role, their tokens are returned automatically; otherwise, they are locked in the smart contract until the end of the project, when their performance is evaluated by their peers and their tokens are returned accordingly. Thus, the workers are protected from underperformance of other team members.

To ensure that the rewards are fairly distributed among the team members, we are utilizing our smart contract-based peer-to-peer review mechanism.

This allows participants to rate each other’s contributions, directly influencing the reward that a certain worker receives for the work completed. So, if someone works productively and efficiently, they will be rewarded fairly; if an individual underperforms, they will be rewarded appropriately — as deemed by other team members.

Covee helps project initiators with their decisions about the selection of team members with a reputation system. Our platform offers a rating system that takes into account the past performance of users on projects both from the peer and client perspectives.

Additionally, the worker’s reputation is based on the ratings he or she has received on other trusted and relevant platforms (i.e., Github). Thus, chronically underperforming workers can be identified prior to project initiation and flagged or simply avoided in the first place.

On the Covee platform, projects from a diverse set of fields can be completed in a decentralised manner. For example, teams of cancer researchers who are living in various, separate locations around the world can collaborate on a project — as explained in one of our articles — and all feel like they are equals, garnering equal benefits and fair treatment.

This is in contrast to the model of Google and other centralized firms, which will soon get relegated to the “old way” of collaboration. Indeed, Covee’s model of work is the model of the future.

We are thrilled to be empowering workers during this time of change. Indeed, we at Covee aspire to make the world work more efficiently and fairly; and thanks to our blockchain system and other features, we actually can!

Find out more about Covee and the problems we are addressing in our last post, where we discuss our Vision and Mission and the steps we are taking towards a happier, distributed workplace.