Kate Muth on the Future of Work and What Everyone Gets Wrong About Gig Workers

But you had published an article last year about the myths of gig work. It’s interesting, this intersection of how you’ve helped carriers and brokers with the user experience, but also how you’ve helped them look at their users as people versus, you know, someone they just make money off. And so one of the myths is that gig workers are Millennials, which again, I just said it, I tend to think the younger generations drive a lot of this, but maybe you guys feel otherwise.

KM Well, I think that that’s sort of a place that we started when we were first investigating the gig worker mindset and the potential users of some of the systems that we were working on designing. And that was an assumption that we held in common with the popular imagination. A lot of these platforms that have emerged in the last 15-20 years to connect people to these kind of temporary one-off work opportunities, it’s in their best interest to get more workers on their platforms and advertise it as sort of more of a lifestyle choice and as a way to reclaim the freedom that we were talking about over your work life and your daily life. And that’s a very attractive proposition. And they were able to catch a lot of millennials who were embarking on their careers and catch their imagination– kind of harness those ideas of gig work to the ideas of entrepreneurial-ism and really striking out on your own and following your passion. And that was a very effective marketing sort of ploy by a lot of these platforms to make it seem very attractive.

And there’s a lot of truth in that, but because the millennials were sort of in a place where they maybe hadn’t worked before for a more traditional structured employer, they maybe wouldn’t know what they were giving up.

But when we did our research, we actually learned that, well, there is a segment of the sort of millennial population that is certainly doing this work. And we kind of laugh when we talk about millennials now, because it ends up being sort of just people, because they such a big part of the workforce and a part of the population –

PVA: Yeah it’s like 93 million people. So, as a generation, they are a lot bigger than the Baby Boomers.

KM: Yes. And when we actually look at the share in the full-time independent workforce, it’s pretty evenly split between the Boomers, Millennials and Gen X. Millennials have a little bit of an edge, but as you said, they also have an edge on numbers, just pure population. And when you look kind of closer into it, the majority of gig workers aren’t necessarily those sort of freedom-seeking digital nomads who are shaping their own entrepreneurial trajectories. A lot of people are actually doing gig work to supplement a full-time job. We found 71% of people we spoke to were actually employed and working at full-time jobs while they were doing their gig work. And many of them, you know, 42% were married, almost 30% had children. So this sort of vision of it being a single free person, kind of just kicking back and picking up work to get to the next gig is true on some level. But there are also a lot of people who are using gig work as sort of a portfolio of employment to make ends meet or to get ahead.

PVA: That’s interesting for all kinds of reasons.

Myth 2: gig workers are platform workers. That’s what you were describing earlier when you were talking about things like Uber and Airbnb, right?

KM: Yup. And I think the platform phenomenon where these new technologies have enabled more people to consider and take up gig work again, has sort of captured the popular imagination and branded that worker as a gig worker. But in reality, you know, at Cake & Arrow, we have always employed freelancers and independent contractors to do various aspects of design work. And like a lot of designers, many of them have always worked as independent contractors and that’s true across the workforce where there are lots of people in all walks of life who do not have a long-term traditional relationship with an employer and are picking up work. And so there hasn’t been so much of a shift in the numbers of people who are independent contractors, but it’s more just how they’re accessing work and whether or not they’re taking advantage of these technologies.

PVA: Okay. The third myth is that gig work is a choice, and you kind of alluded to some of that financial pressure they may have, or the need to get ahead in maybe education or whatever it is, or build a portfolio. You see the ads for people drive for Uber who are like, you know, I have a kid home, I have MS and Uber allows me all this freedom to, you know, control my schedule and be with my daughter and deal with MS, et cetera, et cetera. So it’s kind of like, oh, Uber is a savior. And you know, as I think about this now, it sounds kind of like, maybe it’s not really a choice. It sounds like there should be other jobs you could have that could also give you that same flexibility to be with your daughter and deal with your MS that aren’t like a platform or a gig work per se.

KM: Right. And I think that messages like those are very potent because there is such an unmet need, especially in this country for more flexible work arrangements so people can do that- caretaking. You know, we hear a lot about the sandwich generation, where we have people who are taking care of young children and people who are taking care of elderly and ailing parents and grandparents simultaneously, trying to find time for all of those things. There’s just not a ton of options If you’re looking for employment that can accept all of that. You know, when you’re working traditional retail jobs even, you don’t always have control over your schedule. And so that sort of story and message about control is very potent, as I’ve said, even if it is a little bit illusory. I think that maybe desperation is too strong a word, but for a lot of people, they turn to gig work because they do need to make some money, but they do need to fit it in among all of their other responsibilities.

And, you know, for somebody like myself, I’ve been very privileged. When I became a parent, I was able to work part-time because I had understanding employers who would make those arrangements with me. I was incredibly lucky to be able to do that – to work three days a week. And so I think there is an opportunity for more employers to recognize that need and really think about why people are turning to gig work on these platforms and what they’re offering that maybe they could replicate a little bit.

PVA:  Okay. Myth 4: gig workers value flexibility over stability. This is something I’ve heard a lot of too. I don’t know whether this is a generational thing, but I know that younger people in the face of several crises in their lives – the financial meltdown in 2008 and then the pandemic has caused younger people to really worry about stability and money and things like that. So maybe, maybe this is part of that, Right?

KM: I mean, I think that when we’re looking at flexibility and stability, it’s not really an either/or thing. People generally, millennials especially, value both. I think that one thing that’s happened over the past few generations too, or past few decades, is that people may value stability but when they’re looking at traditional jobs and traditional employment arrangements, they’re not necessarily seeing stability exemplified there in the way that maybe it was in past generations. So it doesn’t necessarily seem like such a choice that they’re going to be any more stable in some job arrangements. So it’s not necessarily that they’re choosing gig work because it’s more flexible, but they’re recognizing that flexibility is a benefit of gig work that they want. And they’re not necessarily going to get stability elsewhere anyway.

PVA: Okay. Myth five: gig workers don’t want insurance. As I read the report, I thought that was kind of interesting because I think it exposes this feeling that I’ve had that a lot of people don’t really even understand the product and what an insurance policy actually is and why they need it.

KM: Now throughout all of the various investigations we’ve done, we’ve continually found that gig workers are severely under-insured and that’s true of a lot of people broadly, gig workers, especially. And we’ve also found that there’s just extremely low awareness of what kinds of policies might cover them in their work that it’s even something that they could consider buying. Anecdotally, I have a babysitter in my house right now who is sort of a gig worker herself. And I just asked her, do you have renter’s insurance? because she was telling me she just rented an apartment. And she has lived in New York the last 10 years. And she just said, “no, what’s that?” So there’s a lot of assumptions that we can make when we are working closely with this industry that things are sort of common knowledge that just aren’t– at a shocking degree.

The other thing I would say around the myth that gig workers don’t want insurance is that continually, when we have done our studies, we always posed some sort of question that’s like, would you want, or would you invest in something that would ensure income stability over a period of time or would ensure that if something tragic happened to you, you would have the money to cover your expenses for a given period of time? So kind of describing insurance without using the word, you know, playing that game taboo and always there’s a yes, I definitely want that. I would definitely pay for that. And then when we turn it around and say, okay, here’s an insurance policy that does those things, would you pay for that? No, I don’t want that. It’s sort of the framing of insurance. There are a lot of associations. There are some trust issues there that just, or maybe it’s just the way that it’s positioned and marketed, but there’s definitely a messaging challenge there and possibly an authenticity and integrity challenge there as well.

PVA: Yeah. That is a very articulate response to what I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I think the industry –and you probably are seeing this in your work for carriers and brokers–but it’s like the vernacular, the acronyms, the capital letters on the policies are stuck in the sixties and seventies with how we describe things, the jargon it’s just overwhelming for people. So what they end up doing is feeling that they’re being sold something they don’t need and they only buy what’s absolutely necessary, which you also mention in your study. You know, people buy insurance when they have to– when they have to to buy a house, to buy a car, to have a business, to be a doctor, et cetera, you need it. You gotta have it. But when it comes to something as critically important as disability income, where you have a three times more likely chance of being disabled in your lifetime than dying, and people say I don’t really know what that is or it’s too expensive or whatever it is, it’s a shame. And I think the industry has to do a better job.

KM: Yeah. I mean, I couldn’t agree with you more. And I also think that it’s tied up with some of what we were talking about previously where disability, even life insurance, to a certain extent, these were things that in many people’s minds were associated with employee benefits and things that your employer would tell you if you should have those things or there would be some sort of organizing structure that would serve these policies up to you and you would know if you needed to have them. And if there’s not that organizing structure for people, they just aren’t really getting those connections and understanding that it can actually help them.

PVA: So last question … it’s really maybe more of a snide remark about what I think when I see the term user. I heard someone describe it well: the only other people who are called users aside from people who use technology are drug addicts.  The word user just seems so antiseptic– so inhumane or not human. And over the years, you know, we’ve said user experience, user interface, customer experience has been around seven years or something like that. But I wonder if you feel that at all. And in your work with carriers and brokers, if there are things you do to kind of make it more about the person – not the user. Like in your writing you are really breaking down these gig workers and saying – they’re people – they are people too. You know robots aren’t delivering your food and making a $2 tip. I mean, these are people. Is this something that you bring to your work every day with your clients?

KM: Yeah. And thanks for giving me an opportunity to kind of call that out because I also sort of hesitate when I use that word user, even though it’s part of the lingo we use to describe the work that we do. But ultimately, I mean, I guess user centered design was unfortunately named because the user is the human at the center. And the idea of user-centered design is really to be human centric, people centric. And with the work we do, the first place we start is by talking to individuals and talking to humans. So in the report where we were talking about the myth-busting, that was sort of an aggregate of many studies that we’ve done over the years where we have gone out and talked to people– and some of them were even doing sort of gorilla intercept studies where we’re talking to Uber drivers during our rides and learning about them. Sometimes we’re bringing people into the office and having a round table. Sometimes we’re doing one-on-one interviews where we’re really getting to the heart of the human conditions, human contexts that they’re experiencing in their everyday lives that are leading them to gig work and motivating them to persevere in these sort of employment arrangements that are not always to their advantage. We don’t do any work if we don’t have a phase of customer, user, human research – that drives our discovery and leads to insights that directly impact the things that we recommend and design.

PVA: Yeah. Otherwise it’s just technology. Ones and zeros, right? I mean, I don’t want to pick on tech people. They’re humans too.

KM: It’s a good reminder though, that we often translate it to customer experience or other aspects of experience, but really what we’re talking about is human experience.

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On Point is an Insurance Journal podcast hosted by Peter van Aartrijk featuring conversations with engaging and informative industry experts on technology, branding, social media, and other great topics. You can listen to the full episode featuring Kate Muth here.