Workreactor: Freelance vs. Business
Some time ago, I described for the habrasociety the idea of a virtual corporation - a new scheme of labor relations in the digital age.
I argued that the main problem with the widespread use of remote work is precisely the inappropriate management system - the traditional corporate culture. But there is no doubt that the future of mankind is in distributed, decentralized, virtual companies. Obviously, for most types of work where the employee’s workplace is a computer, there is no sense in constantly moving the physical body from home to office and back, in fact there are only two reasons for this:
Over the course of five years, my colleagues and I have studied the possibility of an alternative organization of labor relations that is more suitable for remote work in the modern digital age. And they came to the conclusion that a qualitative change in this issue can occur only if the following two conditions are met:
And we, as enthusiastic programmers, recorded our experience by creating an information system that implements these principles. And today we want to present you the result of our work - the social business management system Workreactor .
The service is built on a combination of two concepts - a social network and a task management system.
Here are some features of the system, a more complete list can be found in the user manual .
Harmonization of conditions
The sequential transfer of a task or agreement between partners until agreement is reached on all parameters. Also, monetary operations unfavorable for a participant always require confirmation.
Levels of involvement An
unobtrusive scheme of involving a partner in working with the system is used:
Delegation of work
It is possible to quickly delegate work - breaking large tasks into smaller ones and assigning them to individual performers ...
Accounting for working hours
Tasks can be paid according to the hourly or piecework scheme, after receiving work on the task its cost is automatically entered into the calculations. For convenient time tracking, there is a timer; the customer sees what task the contractor is currently working on.
At the moment, the closest to the described organization of labor relations are freelancers, therefore we focus Workreactor primarily on:
We ourselves use Workreactor in our business and we will actively develop and refine it, we want to get a comprehensive ERP system that allows us to organize a business on new, more free and modern principles and take another step from a slave-owning corporate culture towards a new free world without borders and dependence.
We invite everyone to join the beta testing of the system, we will be glad to any comments, comments and suggestions.
Links:
workreactor.ru - project site
User guide
Project blog
Our Twitter
I argued that the main problem with the widespread use of remote work is precisely the inappropriate management system - the traditional corporate culture. But there is no doubt that the future of mankind is in distributed, decentralized, virtual companies. Obviously, for most types of work where the employee’s workplace is a computer, there is no sense in constantly moving the physical body from home to office and back, in fact there are only two reasons for this:
- When the workflow is not organized clearly, constant and intensive communication between employees is required in order to jointly work out ways to resolve issues and coordinate their actions.
- When employees do not have a direct personal interest in the quality result of their work, managers have to tightly control them, personally observing employees.
Over the course of five years, my colleagues and I have studied the possibility of an alternative organization of labor relations that is more suitable for remote work in the modern digital age. And they came to the conclusion that a qualitative change in this issue can occur only if the following two conditions are met:
- Replacing the boss-subordinate relationship with the customer-executor, the lack of a hierarchy of subordination, all employees are equal, if someone needs something from another, he simply orders this work from him,
- Refusal from long-term labor relations (labor contracts) in favor of microcontracts are small clear tasks, beyond which there are no mutual obligations between employees.
And we, as enthusiastic programmers, recorded our experience by creating an information system that implements these principles. And today we want to present you the result of our work - the social business management system Workreactor .
The service is built on a combination of two concepts - a social network and a task management system.
- By organization, this is a social network, i.e. each of the equal participants in the network can establish relationships and communicate with any other participant. However, instead of friendship relations (as in general-purpose social networks), participants conclude agreements among themselves, which are essentially cooperation agreements, and communication takes place in the form of setting and fulfilling tasks and mutual settlements.
- At its core, it is a system for managing tasks and mutual settlements, which takes into account relations with customers and contractors. It allows you at any time to see the full picture of the work being done and the financial balance.
Here are some features of the system, a more complete list can be found in the user manual .
Harmonization of conditions
The sequential transfer of a task or agreement between partners until agreement is reached on all parameters. Also, monetary operations unfavorable for a participant always require confirmation.
Levels of involvement An
unobtrusive scheme of involving a partner in working with the system is used:
- a full-fledged participant uses all the features of the service,
- if the customer does not want to understand the interface, you can enter everything yourself, and he will be limited only to confirmation of the statement of the problem, acceptance of work, monetary operations, etc.,
- if the customer does not log into the system at all, they will simply receive automatic notifications: “work started”, “comment on the task”, “work completed”, etc.,
- the customer may not even know about the existence of the system, then he will appear simply as a client in a CRM system.
Delegation of work
It is possible to quickly delegate work - breaking large tasks into smaller ones and assigning them to individual performers ...
Accounting for working hours
Tasks can be paid according to the hourly or piecework scheme, after receiving work on the task its cost is automatically entered into the calculations. For convenient time tracking, there is a timer; the customer sees what task the contractor is currently working on.
At the moment, the closest to the described organization of labor relations are freelancers, therefore we focus Workreactor primarily on:
- freelancers who want to scale their activities,
- freelancers who want to build an autonomous business on the basis of their activities,
- companies, working with freelancers and using outsourcing.
We ourselves use Workreactor in our business and we will actively develop and refine it, we want to get a comprehensive ERP system that allows us to organize a business on new, more free and modern principles and take another step from a slave-owning corporate culture towards a new free world without borders and dependence.
We invite everyone to join the beta testing of the system, we will be glad to any comments, comments and suggestions.
Links:
workreactor.ru - project site
User guide
Project blog
Our Twitter