WEBVTT
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The problems we were solving were experienced
by businesses and companies and people all over
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the world. This is not just
an Australian problem. It wasn't Australian New
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Zealand problems. was a very much
a problem that existing companies wherever they're a
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desk less workers. You're listening to
the modern workforce, a schedule of podcast.
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This is a show for deskless workforce
innovators, thinkers, advocates and educators.
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You're about to hear an interview about
frontline work of Focus, trends in
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the mobile workforce and war. Let's
get into the show. So welcome to
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the modern workforce, the podcast from
mobile workforce innovators. By schedule Oh.
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I'm your host, David Weibel.
At schedule Oh. We're on a mission
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to serve the two point seven billion
workers and those who employ them that don't
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regularly work from a desk. We
know it can be complicated to manage to
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desk less workforce, but your employees
and customers don't need to know that.
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The desk less productivity cloud from schedule
Oh enables any organization to schedule, manage,
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engage and analyze their mobile workforce.
This is our first podcast episode,
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and so I wanted to give you
an idea of what we're going to be
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talking about. Hopefully you'll join us
while we talk to innovators, leaders,
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advocates, authors and thinkers, not
about the future of work, which I
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think is kind of a well worn
topic, but actually we're going to be
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talking about something different, quite different, and we're going to be talking about
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technology innovation for the deskless workforce.
So what is that? And you know,
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when you talk to Labor economists,
most of them say about eighty percent
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of the workers in the world don't
actually work behind a desk. And yet
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most, if not all, of
the technology investment, and certainly I'll have
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the chat about the future work,
is all about folks who spend a lot
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of time in the office, or
at least used to, and they're going
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to be remote and how that's all
going to play out. But I think
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it's this desk less workforce that we
often here refer to by different names.
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We've been hearing a lot about essential
workers, frontline workers, mobile workers and
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desk less workers. So this this
workforce, is really everybody from carpenters to
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inspectors, tree crews, utility workers, photographers, nurses, field texts,
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home healthcare folks and even disaster volunteers. So it's this very dynamic workforce.
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So we're going to talk about and
specifically how technology is can and I think
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perhaps will be used to help these
workers be more productive and even get really
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more out of their work life.
So I hope you'll join us. Let's
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get started. I'm really excited that
our first guest today is Matt Fairhurst,
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Ore Cofounder and CEO Scheduloh, welcome
Matt. Thanks, David, right to
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be here. Great to have you. So he's going to be joined us
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to share with us a few things. Obviously why he started the company,
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why he decided to focus on technology
for the mobile workforce, what was the
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company's mission from the very get go
and some of the challenges and opportunities we've
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seen along the way. We all
know about the big one, obviously covid
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and how he's guiding a company to
help us, milled a modern technology platform
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for the future of desk US works. So let's get started, shall we?
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Let's do it now, right.
So I did my research, obviously
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for the background here, and I
went all the way back to two thousand
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and seventeen and you gave a podcast
in review to Morgan's and you said something
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that was super interesting to me and
you said you mentioned schedule as vision for
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workers at the company founding was always
beyond Australia shores, which I thought was
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really charming. That's where you're from, the Australia. But can you talk
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a little bit about what informed your
vision and why you thought that was so
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and why you why you focused on
this other set of workers that actually was
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under invested in? Yeah, I
think there's a little bit in there,
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but I'd say this probably two big
drivers behind why. When we started the
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company we were what I would call
like global from day one and we pretty
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and we were really actually we had
kind of a team, very small team,
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in Vietnam, we had a team
in Australia, and I think I
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always knew that if we solved these
challenge and addresses challenge well and we did
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a good job, that it would
quickly be universally applicable, at least initially
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just sort of other English speaking countries
and United States and North America at a
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broad level and Europe. And you
know that was not just because of the
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opportunity to build a big company and
the desire to build a big company and
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lean into a big problem that was
genuinely global, because I think when you
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found a company, say somewhere like
Austral you do have a little bit of
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a choice. Do you kind of
build something for a local market and then
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maybe later take it global, or
do you kind of have a global mindset
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from day one? And we took
the ladder both in terms of how we
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built the team but also how we
thought about the product and the opportunity.
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And it was very clear, I
think, from the very early days,
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that the problems we were solving were
experienced by businesses and companies and people all
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over the world. This is not
just an Australian problem. It wasn't Australian
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New Zealand problems. was a very
much a problem that exists in companies wherever
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there are deskless workers with their like
a funny couldn't get a tax the IM
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Paris moment. I don't I mean
I don't know that there was too many
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funny stories like that. Be Kenning
getting right, couldn't find it a place
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to sleep at a conference. You
know, those are the two famous stories.
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Very be an Uber Yeah, the
founding story actually came about from a
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company that James, my cofounder,
and I had built before Scheduler, okay,
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and we were consulting or using that
come, you know, opportunity to
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consult into companies and try and sell
our product. As a result, and
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at the time a lot of people
poll that we spoke to weren't terribly interested
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in the product we'd built, but
they were very interested in exploring this kind
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of problem of mobility and organizing people
and work and they you know, I
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think they were all realizing we've got
a platform for crm over here, we've
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got a platform in the cloud for
financial as, a platform in the cloud
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for the RP. We're running almost
every other aspect of our business using kind
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of interesting forward cloud based technology,
except for, you know, this very
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fundamental part of getting work done and
managing and organizing and helping our workforce,
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you know, be productive. So
surely they must be an opportunity here.
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And and you know, it was
kind of recognizing that universal conversation that was
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happening around us that then prompted us, and me to do a photoshop mark
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up of what a product could look
like. Put that in front of a
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bunch of customers and all them that
was our first four customers and we didn't
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have a product, but we had
a design and a vision of where it
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could go and that was very exciting. So I like to like to remember
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this day, tuned twenty nine,
two thousand and seven, and ask people
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like what they guessed that day would
be and why that's important. So that
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that was the launch of the iphone. Yeah, and so you you launched
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your company in two thousand and thirteen, seven years into that. Yeah,
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by that time we were probably on
iphone, I don't know, six or
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whatever. Yea Five and so did
that figure into your calculus about hey,
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we've got this library of Alexandria plus
many cray on our hands now. Shouldn't
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we be kind of doing something here? Yeah, I think so. And
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you know, I think that conversation
evolved over time between two thousand and seven
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and two thousand and thirteen, but
it was probably right around then where not
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only the majority of people had a
smartphone in the hands, but these smartphones
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would reach the point where they were
pretty capable of running reasonably powerful and certainly
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more and more powerful everyday applications at
work. Before then, it was sort
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of this gradual increase of making phone
calls and using a calculator and browsing the
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web, into APPs on the web
that were designed for Mobile, into an
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APP store and all of these things. So I think that that journey was
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gradual, but it was really when
we started the company, to two thousand
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and twenty fourteen, what was becoming
very prolific in businesses, certainly. I
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mean I worked at a company where
there's a financial company and one of the
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leaders of the companies should up and
said, I don't really ever think people
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are going to want to do financial
transactions on a phone. It's not secure.
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It out right and then and then
all of a sudden, six months
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later, we got a rest for
API that was secure and it was endorsed
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and everybody started to use it.
And then all of a sudden, like
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Oh yeah, come better, we
better get busy on this, right,
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can we do rest? Like yeah, I know, like, oh,
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that'll take a million londs of golden
six years from we're like, Oh yeah,
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some of the companies were caught a
little bit with their pants down and
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it was the wild worst there for
a while. And you know, what
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technologies do you choose? How much
do you go native as wherever and you
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build these products? There was all
sorts of really interesting conversations happening, but
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I think a direction was clear at
that point. You know interesting. So
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let's talk a bit, a little
bit about the how government regulation perhaps helped
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or hindered you. I know there's
a lot about there's a specific vertical and
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Australia called NDS. Can you talk
a little bit about that and and how
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that became a really good use case
for the product early on? Yeah,
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there's been a number of times,
I'd say, through the life span of
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the company, where changes at a
regulatory level or a government level have helped
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to drive growth or presented opportunities that
would been able to capitalize on. You
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know, a very obvious one was
the work we did recently with covid and
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really lent into that challenge. But
much earlier than that, the N dis,
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or the national disability insurance scheme in
Australia was a piece of legislation that
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started to mandate and shape the way
that providers that were helping individuals with disabilities
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in the home and in the community
interacted with technology and provided a level of
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reporting and rigger around the way that
they were working and to a large extent
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that included this requirement to make sure
that they were leveraging technology to capture,
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you know, a rafter different information
about where they are going, what they
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were doing, how they were doing
it, etc. Not only for their
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own productivity but ultimately so that they
could be reimbursed by the government for providing
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those services in the community. Yeah, yeah, so I think in the
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US there was a similar piece of
policy here, maybe not as rapidly embedded,
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called EVV, or electronic visit verification. Similar sort of mandated a government,
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a government level, and you know, I think some industries the government
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does decide to make decisions on their
behalf around you know, we need to
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make sure that this industry is heading
in the right direction and these services are
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provided in a way that's really positive
for citizens and and, you know,
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members of the community that they're targeting. So that was definitely an interesting opportunity
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and gave us a great moment to
serve a very important industry and a very
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important sector that provides these amazing services
to people, you know, all through
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Australia, New Zealand, very similar
emotions in the United Kingdom as well.
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Schedules cloud based platform helps organizations around
the world schedule, manage and engage their
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desk list workforce. We're on a
mission to serve the two point seven billion
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workers and those who employ them that
don't regularly work from a desk. Our
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global team is here to help customers
realize their full potential by enabling their workforce
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with collaboration and innovation. Learn more
about the mobile workforce at schedule Ofcom.
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So I want to switch gears a
little bit and talk about company values.
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There's been a lot of banter,
or obviously in silicon value, about how
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we come up with company values and
how much they mean and where they come
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from and how, if they're you
know, they're just window dressing. But
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I think as an employee I've experienced
them here first, in a first person
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way, YEP, and I've experienced
in a little bit differently. I think
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we have a little bit of a
different experience here at scheduler where we actually
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use them on a regular basis to
teach, to learn and to work.
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So talk a little bit. And
so our first value is caring first.
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It's actually the first value, but
it's also caring first. Can you talk
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a little bit about, you know, first and formist, like how you
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guys how we how we thought about
company values, how we came up with
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them and then why we picked how
that one actually came about. First,
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and then, third, how you
think that it helps us build products for
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workers. First, yeah, that's
a great question and and funnily enough,
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I mean when we first started schedule
A, the definition of our values,
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I don't think came from any great
master mind moment. For sure, I
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think, in fact, I think
I just went to a last Sians website
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and basically copy, copy and pasted
the one. Surprised right exactly that Mike
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and Scott came up with. But
I do remember thinking at the time like
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I looked for company values at other
companies that are like largely reflected my own
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personality. Yeah, and I think
that's important. When you found or start
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a company is your values become largely
a reflection of your own personality and your
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own personal values, and that scales
for a period of time where you kind
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of know everybody and everybody can appreciate
those values, maybe through the interactions with
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you or you know your your own
personality. But then you hit a point
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where it doesn't scale anymore and you
don't know everybody and not everybody knows you,
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so the connection with the values that
you've articulated becomes much harder to attach
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to, you know, and that
stopped scaling for us here at schedule for
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a while, I'd say, and
then we made a really deliberate decision to
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say, look, this is no
longer and this can no longer be like
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my personality or my own resonance with
like the values that I copy and pasted
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right at the start, and we
have to kind of get together collectively and
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think about what are the values that
are important to us. And we went
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through an exercise together as a company
and really kind of explored the stories and
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the anecdotes and the feelings that people
had working for the company and how could
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we really define them in a way
that kind of codified so as the bottom
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of appro yeah, it was bottoms
up and okay, you know, maybe
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a refresh on my own thinking on
a values front, and they kind of
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combined and we talked about them as
a team and, you know, here
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we are. So, you know, as a wonderful exercise to go through
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and something we're very proud of and
we've branded, you know, much broader
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definition of our culture as schedule,
our heart, and part of that,
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I think you know. To your
second question is, you know, a
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recognition that there are many stakeholders in
a company beyond the obvious ones of your
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customers and your employees and your shareholders. In that you know, I think
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we do have an impact as a
company on our communities and in the communities
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that were a part of with our
offices and the people that we employ.
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But even broader than that, like
looking at the planet and the impact that
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we're going to have on that planet. In the opportunity to invest and contribute
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across all of our stakeholders is incredibly
important and I do think it's a responsibility
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of companies and founders as they grow, you know, specifically to our users
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and how to our values, particularly
caring first kind of relate to, you
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know, our values and our customers. I think this probably comes back a
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little bit to that relationship that we
do have with our stakeholders, and one
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thing that I think anyone starting a
company has to acknowledge is, you know,
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are you building a product because of
the experiences that you have personally as
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a company? You know, so
if you're building, if we build a
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productivity tool for software engineering company or
Technology Company, then you are your own
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customer and you can inform the needs
and the inputs that go into ultimately what
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needs to be included in the product. For us, we're not a desk
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less workforce. We don't we're not
mobile as a workforce, and so you
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need to have a level of empathy
and connection to your customers and your users
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that perhaps is even deeper than any
other company that's building product for themselves initially
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and then sells it to other people, because you don't every day experience the
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challenges of deathless workforces. We're not
experiencing the challenges of people that are scheduling
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and organizing way we doubt or going
into people's Times. We don't do that.
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So you know, the level of
connection and empathy you need to have
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with your customers in a very caring
way is not only important to, you
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know, lean into this concept of
sort of stakehold of value, but also
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to deeply understand the challenges that they
have and build product to address them.
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Did that come through, I mean, when we did this bottom up approach,
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did that insight come through? The
like hey, we're not these workers
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we need. Like when we built
product at Uber for freight, we hired
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truck drivers because we didn't understand what
it was like to drive a track right
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and by the same token, I
you know, we try to involve drivers
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as much as we possibly could when
we rebuilt the driver APP. Yeah,
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I mean, yeah, one of
our other values is sort of customer driven
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and and I think that sort of
talks a lot more directly to this kind
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of concept that you need to be
very in tune and dial then with these
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needs of your customers and the users
at our customer for you know, these
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exact reasons. You just do not
know sometimes and you have to build a
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level of empathy towards the challenges they're
going through in very real ways. Cool.
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So I want to also ask you
a little bit about obviously, covid.
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We Gun couldn't do the interview without
that. COVID came about and nobody
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really saw it coming, and so
I think there, when the history will
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be written, I think every business
will have their own story, both good
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and bad, both horrendous and amazing, and for both their workers their company
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would impact it had what the learnings
we had with the journey was, since
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we're all kind of going through this
together. My grandparents both were involved in
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the war effort in World War II
and when I spoke with him about that
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experience, they said it was a
war and we were all in it together
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and we fought it together, and
so I think this moment in time is
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kind of a strange togetherness. Yet
we're obviously socially distance. So schedule.
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Oh, I think had a unique
opportunity and a challenge that came up came
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about. So I want to share
with the audience kind of how that occurred,
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the kind of history of how we
involved, got involved with by preference
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and then how that smaller project,
whether or not I was it was started
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at that time or when covid presented, as presented itself. What was the
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journey like? And then what worth
the challenge as a commercializing the platform after
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the fact from testing the vaccine.
Yeah, this was this been an interesting
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to you. The very interesting to
use very challenging to you is for kidding,
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for everyone, for a little to
jain reasons, sure, and you
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know I love this story because it
is a real, I think, manifestation
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of way your values truly tested and
challenged, but then articulated. So one
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okay, in the context of a
business. And you know, when covid
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really hit, let's say it was
kind of two to three months in,
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where I think everybody started to realize
this is real and it's not going anywhere
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and in fact it's it's a huge
problem. I mean this is now.
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Sure it's a pandemic, but people
are dying and it's and it's causing major
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issues of concern. And we done
a few things, I think, at
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the start to think about our immediate
customers, people that were with us and
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already a customer. How could we
help them out? Did they need some
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financial supporter? Did they need a
few things in the product just to help
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them transition to, say, working
always in the field to working sometimes in
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the home and doing but you know, in hell, every example, doing
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things like this in customers really are
doing things like telemedicine visits rather than in
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in the home when they could afford
to do so. And in turn,
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you know, the machinations made sense. So there are a few smaller things
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that we did. But then we
really wanted to challenge ourselves as a company
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and say who is really at the
front line of some of the big challenges
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right now that you know, the
world is going through. And we were
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talking to a company called by reference
labs in New York. They are are
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large flabotomy laboratory and they were being
contracted by governments and, you know,
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the prison system of New York,
the education system in New York, to
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just get testing happening at our scale
that no one had ever seen it before,
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and many of these testing locations were
really struggling to organize and schedule.
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The number of people that were simply
in dating like you know people was credible
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and there was traffic dams down the
street. It was very dangerous and unsafe
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for all obvious reasons. And we
said, look, I think we can
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help. I think the fundamentals of
what we built about around our platform,
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the challenges that we've always solved for
the last, you know, five years,
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could really lend themselves to what a
solution could look like here. Why
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don't we do that for free?
Why don't we just try and figure that
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out and give me two weeks?
I'll work with the team and just see
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if what we can come back was
like a covid hack at that. Yeah,
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exactly. I mean it really was. We just found over testing was
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the tip of this spear. That
was kind of like the biggest problem.
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Yeah, because we did have a
vaccine yet. We just needed to find
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out where the virus was, yeah, where it was being amplified, yeah,
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and how to get under control in
those places. Yeah, and and
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by our reference labs was, you
know, one of the the companies were
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doing that at scale. And so
it was kind of when we started the
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company, we sort of just said, well, what are the problems?
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Could we come back to you in
a week and with a possible solution,
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even just a design of a solution? Okay, if that made sense,
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and it did, and they,
you know, they said Yeah, let's
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do this, and so we then
built it. I think it took him
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another, you know, three or
four weeks and we stood it up on
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the platform and then, you know, that became one of the massive cornerstone
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for how then they were able to
scale and we worked with a few other
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organizations to help them tested scale that
quickly. Then Genesis into vaccine administration.
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Let's go, and right government's all
over the world were starting to think about
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the challenges of how do you allow
members of the public to manage and administer
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their own appointments arrive on time in
safe, you know, with a level
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of safety that probably wasn't even seen
during the first waves of both testing and
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vaccination. So it was an amazing
opportunity and I think to date now we've
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helped with, helped schedule and facilitate
more than thirty seven million vaccine appointments all
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over the world. So it's thirty
seven million being an incredible thing to be
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a part of, an incredible amount
of pressure and stress for all the right
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reasons, but also an amazing opportunity
to help. And what's the volume?
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So users like me, when I
scheduled my appointment, Yep, on on
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my turn for California, I was
a schedule user at that point. Awesome,
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really, is that? That's I
was using the service to do.
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That's right. Yeah, amazing.
Yeah, and I've read somewhere that it
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was the scale was six ender transactions
a second or something like that. At
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its speak, it was pretty,
you know, it was extremely high throughput.
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Yeah, and it's and it's not
just high through like a visiting a
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website at that kind of scale is
sort of like all right, but then
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when you've got to at that velocity, make sure that you can present information
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to the user that was accurate and
accurately presented what was happening on the ground.
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And very complex sort of overlap between, you know, concepts like the
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supply of vaccine at the time.
All the right I've tested. Are Any
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the appointment? Are They not getting
get the appointment? Are they eligible?
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Yeah, and the even the physical
throughput in the capacity of a venue or
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a location. You know, dodger
stadium in La is very different to maybe
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a local fire station in Marine.
You are must Ay. Yeah, sure.
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00:24:02.029 --> 00:24:06.029
So these kind of very complex paradigms. You know, we had to
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kind of surface at two millions of
people at a time and make sure that
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they could, you know, effectively
use a system. So yeah, very,
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very commle know, complex and interesting
challenges dissolved, but we got there.
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We've made a lot of progress that
it seems like it's two steps forward
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on step back. Sometimes. We're
clearly not through it yet, but we're
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starting to turn the corner in some
ways. YEA, and I want to
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shift here's a little bit about some
broader trends that you think you're beginning to
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see and have the opportunity to work
towards. So for the future, Matt,
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what do you think? How do
how do you think technology can kind
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of help workers in the future?
What do you think that market opportunity is
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for this kind of workforce? What
are some of the top trends you're seeing
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right now? Well, I think
death was work is generally a still one
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of the most underinvested segments of the
workforce, but they also happened to be
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the largest right and you know,
eighty percent of the global workforce doesn't sit
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in an office and behind a desk. And yet when you look at the
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sort of you you overlay that with
the amount of investment that's been made in
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desktop computing technology and and web sort
of desktop focus technology that you and I
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use every day. I mean at
the difference. Is Signal Nivigant and where's
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the Desk Force Tower? That's workforce
tower. Yeah, I mean, you
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00:25:22.809 --> 00:25:26.769
know, I think, I think
there's, you know, still a huge
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gap in both the investments and the
capabilities of technology and, you know,
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the mediums that are accessible to people
that don't work in an office, and
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that still remains, I think,
our biggest mission. How do we build
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the platform to ultimately amplify enhanced and
in rich deslos workers everywhere, whether they're
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a mobile healthcare worker or whether they're, you know, a field service,
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manufacturing break fixed worker or retail hospitality
worker, for example. You know,
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there are platforms for everything else that
exists in the cloud and we want to
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keep building this kind of leading,
world class platform for this segment of the
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workforce at scale. You know,
I think in terms of things that have
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happened recently and maybe trends that have
come out of Covid I think people that
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work in an office, and maybe
we're responsible for the looking after big portions
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of the Deste workforced in the past, have, I hope, a greater
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level of empathy with the level of
disconnectedness that desk less workers have and have
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always had, actually, you know, somewhat by design and as we all
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kind of retreated into our homes and
had to find new ways of engaging and
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relating to one another and communicating with
one another, those challenges of existed for
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destiny. Well, it's been there
for forever. I'm not an age q
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anymore, okay, I'm just connected, and now that path is well understood
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by people who. Wait a minute, I'm not connected to my team anymore,
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or how do I how do I
keep that going? Yeah, and
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for brands and companies where engagement and
connectivity with their workforce is important and critical.
379
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You know, this is a great
awakening, I think, in terms
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of realizing the challenge that exist for
people that are inherently disconnected all the time
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from each other. And so how
does communication, collaboration, engagement amplify human
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productivity and efficiency and effectiveness and happiness
work? And that's, I think,
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a trend that we keep leaning into
and I think is emerged through some of
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this as well. See you're here
to here first the knit, the next
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00:27:21.490 --> 00:27:26.130
great awakening. Well, I wanted
to thank you for joining us today and
386
00:27:26.289 --> 00:27:30.519
I want to thank my guest,
Matt Fairhurst, Co founder and CEO of
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schedule. Oh, and I hope
to hear from you off soon and hope
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00:27:33.960 --> 00:27:37.119
you come back for our next episode. Thanks to it. Would love to
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be back. This certainly way more
we could talk about. Absolutely see as
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00:27:41.720 --> 00:27:48.269
soon you've been listening to the modern
workforce, the podcast for deskless workforce innovators
391
00:27:48.309 --> 00:27:51.829
by schedule Oh, keep connected with
us by subscribing to the show and your
392
00:27:51.869 --> 00:27:56.309
favorite podcast player please. Give us
a rating, leave a comment and share
393
00:27:56.390 --> 00:28:00.380
episodes you love or you moss at
the modern workforce. At schedule Ofcom that
394
00:28:00.539 --> 00:28:06.099
helps us keep delivering the latest and
deskless workforce innovation. Thanks for listening.
395
00:28:06.140 --> 00:28:07.220
Until next time,
1
00:00:00.040 --> 00:00:04.839
The problems we were solving were experienced
by businesses and companies and people all over
2
00:00:04.879 --> 00:00:08.189
the world. This is not just
an Australian problem. It wasn't Australian New
3
00:00:08.189 --> 00:00:13.189
Zealand problems. was a very much
a problem that existing companies wherever they're a
4
00:00:13.269 --> 00:00:21.859
desk less workers. You're listening to
the modern workforce, a schedule of podcast.
5
00:00:22.500 --> 00:00:27.820
This is a show for deskless workforce
innovators, thinkers, advocates and educators.
6
00:00:28.579 --> 00:00:32.259
You're about to hear an interview about
frontline work of Focus, trends in
7
00:00:32.299 --> 00:00:39.450
the mobile workforce and war. Let's
get into the show. So welcome to
8
00:00:39.490 --> 00:00:43.530
the modern workforce, the podcast from
mobile workforce innovators. By schedule Oh.
9
00:00:43.929 --> 00:00:47.210
I'm your host, David Weibel.
At schedule Oh. We're on a mission
10
00:00:47.369 --> 00:00:51.679
to serve the two point seven billion
workers and those who employ them that don't
11
00:00:51.719 --> 00:00:55.039
regularly work from a desk. We
know it can be complicated to manage to
12
00:00:55.079 --> 00:00:58.799
desk less workforce, but your employees
and customers don't need to know that.
13
00:00:59.479 --> 00:01:03.870
The desk less productivity cloud from schedule
Oh enables any organization to schedule, manage,
14
00:01:04.390 --> 00:01:10.069
engage and analyze their mobile workforce.
This is our first podcast episode,
15
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and so I wanted to give you
an idea of what we're going to be
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talking about. Hopefully you'll join us
while we talk to innovators, leaders,
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advocates, authors and thinkers, not
about the future of work, which I
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think is kind of a well worn
topic, but actually we're going to be
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talking about something different, quite different, and we're going to be talking about
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technology innovation for the deskless workforce.
So what is that? And you know,
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when you talk to Labor economists,
most of them say about eighty percent
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of the workers in the world don't
actually work behind a desk. And yet
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most, if not all, of
the technology investment, and certainly I'll have
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the chat about the future work,
is all about folks who spend a lot
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of time in the office, or
at least used to, and they're going
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to be remote and how that's all
going to play out. But I think
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it's this desk less workforce that we
often here refer to by different names.
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We've been hearing a lot about essential
workers, frontline workers, mobile workers and
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desk less workers. So this this
workforce, is really everybody from carpenters to
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inspectors, tree crews, utility workers, photographers, nurses, field texts,
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home healthcare folks and even disaster volunteers. So it's this very dynamic workforce.
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So we're going to talk about and
specifically how technology is can and I think
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perhaps will be used to help these
workers be more productive and even get really
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more out of their work life.
So I hope you'll join us. Let's
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get started. I'm really excited that
our first guest today is Matt Fairhurst,
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Ore Cofounder and CEO Scheduloh, welcome
Matt. Thanks, David, right to
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be here. Great to have you. So he's going to be joined us
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to share with us a few things. Obviously why he started the company,
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why he decided to focus on technology
for the mobile workforce, what was the
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company's mission from the very get go
and some of the challenges and opportunities we've
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seen along the way. We all
know about the big one, obviously covid
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and how he's guiding a company to
help us, milled a modern technology platform
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for the future of desk US works. So let's get started, shall we?
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Let's do it now, right.
So I did my research, obviously
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for the background here, and I
went all the way back to two thousand
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and seventeen and you gave a podcast
in review to Morgan's and you said something
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that was super interesting to me and
you said you mentioned schedule as vision for
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workers at the company founding was always
beyond Australia shores, which I thought was
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really charming. That's where you're from, the Australia. But can you talk
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a little bit about what informed your
vision and why you thought that was so
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and why you why you focused on
this other set of workers that actually was
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under invested in? Yeah, I
think there's a little bit in there,
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but I'd say this probably two big
drivers behind why. When we started the
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company we were what I would call
like global from day one and we pretty
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and we were really actually we had
kind of a team, very small team,
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in Vietnam, we had a team
in Australia, and I think I
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always knew that if we solved these
challenge and addresses challenge well and we did
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a good job, that it would
quickly be universally applicable, at least initially
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just sort of other English speaking countries
and United States and North America at a
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broad level and Europe. And you
know that was not just because of the
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opportunity to build a big company and
the desire to build a big company and
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lean into a big problem that was
genuinely global, because I think when you
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found a company, say somewhere like
Austral you do have a little bit of
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a choice. Do you kind of
build something for a local market and then
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maybe later take it global, or
do you kind of have a global mindset
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from day one? And we took
the ladder both in terms of how we
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built the team but also how we
thought about the product and the opportunity.
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And it was very clear, I
think, from the very early days,
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that the problems we were solving were
experienced by businesses and companies and people all
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over the world. This is not
just an Australian problem. It wasn't Australian
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New Zealand problems. was a very
much a problem that exists in companies wherever
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there are deskless workers with their like
a funny couldn't get a tax the IM
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Paris moment. I don't I mean
I don't know that there was too many
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funny stories like that. Be Kenning
getting right, couldn't find it a place
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to sleep at a conference. You
know, those are the two famous stories.
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Very be an Uber Yeah, the
founding story actually came about from a
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company that James, my cofounder,
and I had built before Scheduler, okay,
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and we were consulting or using that
come, you know, opportunity to
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consult into companies and try and sell
our product. As a result, and
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at the time a lot of people
poll that we spoke to weren't terribly interested
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in the product we'd built, but
they were very interested in exploring this kind
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of problem of mobility and organizing people
and work and they you know, I
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think they were all realizing we've got
a platform for crm over here, we've
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got a platform in the cloud for
financial as, a platform in the cloud
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for the RP. We're running almost
every other aspect of our business using kind
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of interesting forward cloud based technology,
except for, you know, this very
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fundamental part of getting work done and
managing and organizing and helping our workforce,
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you know, be productive. So
surely they must be an opportunity here.
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And and you know, it was
kind of recognizing that universal conversation that was
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happening around us that then prompted us, and me to do a photoshop mark
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up of what a product could look
like. Put that in front of a
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bunch of customers and all them that
was our first four customers and we didn't
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have a product, but we had
a design and a vision of where it
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could go and that was very exciting. So I like to like to remember
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this day, tuned twenty nine,
two thousand and seven, and ask people
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like what they guessed that day would
be and why that's important. So that
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that was the launch of the iphone. Yeah, and so you you launched
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your company in two thousand and thirteen, seven years into that. Yeah,
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by that time we were probably on
iphone, I don't know, six or
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whatever. Yea Five and so did
that figure into your calculus about hey,
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we've got this library of Alexandria plus
many cray on our hands now. Shouldn't
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we be kind of doing something here? Yeah, I think so. And
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you know, I think that conversation
evolved over time between two thousand and seven
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and two thousand and thirteen, but
it was probably right around then where not
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only the majority of people had a
smartphone in the hands, but these smartphones
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would reach the point where they were
pretty capable of running reasonably powerful and certainly
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more and more powerful everyday applications at
work. Before then, it was sort
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of this gradual increase of making phone
calls and using a calculator and browsing the
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web, into APPs on the web
that were designed for Mobile, into an
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APP store and all of these things. So I think that that journey was
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gradual, but it was really when
we started the company, to two thousand
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and twenty fourteen, what was becoming
very prolific in businesses, certainly. I
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mean I worked at a company where
there's a financial company and one of the
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leaders of the companies should up and
said, I don't really ever think people
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are going to want to do financial
transactions on a phone. It's not secure.
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It out right and then and then
all of a sudden, six months
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later, we got a rest for
API that was secure and it was endorsed
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and everybody started to use it.
And then all of a sudden, like
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Oh yeah, come better, we
better get busy on this, right,
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can we do rest? Like yeah, I know, like, oh,
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that'll take a million londs of golden
six years from we're like, Oh yeah,
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some of the companies were caught a
little bit with their pants down and
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it was the wild worst there for
a while. And you know, what
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technologies do you choose? How much
do you go native as wherever and you
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build these products? There was all
sorts of really interesting conversations happening, but
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I think a direction was clear at
that point. You know interesting. So
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let's talk a bit, a little
bit about the how government regulation perhaps helped
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or hindered you. I know there's
a lot about there's a specific vertical and
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Australia called NDS. Can you talk
a little bit about that and and how
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that became a really good use case
for the product early on? Yeah,
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there's been a number of times,
I'd say, through the life span of
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the company, where changes at a
regulatory level or a government level have helped
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to drive growth or presented opportunities that
would been able to capitalize on. You
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know, a very obvious one was
the work we did recently with covid and
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really lent into that challenge. But
much earlier than that, the N dis,
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or the national disability insurance scheme in
Australia was a piece of legislation that
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started to mandate and shape the way
that providers that were helping individuals with disabilities
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in the home and in the community
interacted with technology and provided a level of
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reporting and rigger around the way that
they were working and to a large extent
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that included this requirement to make sure
that they were leveraging technology to capture,
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you know, a rafter different information
about where they are going, what they
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were doing, how they were doing
it, etc. Not only for their
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own productivity but ultimately so that they
could be reimbursed by the government for providing
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those services in the community. Yeah, yeah, so I think in the
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US there was a similar piece of
policy here, maybe not as rapidly embedded,
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called EVV, or electronic visit verification. Similar sort of mandated a government,
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a government level, and you know, I think some industries the government
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does decide to make decisions on their
behalf around you know, we need to
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make sure that this industry is heading
in the right direction and these services are
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provided in a way that's really positive
for citizens and and, you know,
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members of the community that they're targeting. So that was definitely an interesting opportunity
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and gave us a great moment to
serve a very important industry and a very
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important sector that provides these amazing services
to people, you know, all through
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Australia, New Zealand, very similar
emotions in the United Kingdom as well.
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Schedules cloud based platform helps organizations around
the world schedule, manage and engage their
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desk list workforce. We're on a
mission to serve the two point seven billion
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workers and those who employ them that
don't regularly work from a desk. Our
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global team is here to help customers
realize their full potential by enabling their workforce
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with collaboration and innovation. Learn more
about the mobile workforce at schedule Ofcom.
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So I want to switch gears a
little bit and talk about company values.
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There's been a lot of banter,
or obviously in silicon value, about how
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we come up with company values and
how much they mean and where they come
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from and how, if they're you
know, they're just window dressing. But
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I think as an employee I've experienced
them here first, in a first person
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way, YEP, and I've experienced
in a little bit differently. I think
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we have a little bit of a
different experience here at scheduler where we actually
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use them on a regular basis to
teach, to learn and to work.
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So talk a little bit. And
so our first value is caring first.
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It's actually the first value, but
it's also caring first. Can you talk
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a little bit about, you know, first and formist, like how you
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guys how we how we thought about
company values, how we came up with
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them and then why we picked how
that one actually came about. First,
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and then, third, how you
think that it helps us build products for
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workers. First, yeah, that's
a great question and and funnily enough,
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I mean when we first started schedule
A, the definition of our values,
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I don't think came from any great
master mind moment. For sure, I
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think, in fact, I think
I just went to a last Sians website
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and basically copy, copy and pasted
the one. Surprised right exactly that Mike
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and Scott came up with. But
I do remember thinking at the time like
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I looked for company values at other
companies that are like largely reflected my own
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personality. Yeah, and I think
that's important. When you found or start
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a company is your values become largely
a reflection of your own personality and your
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own personal values, and that scales
for a period of time where you kind
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of know everybody and everybody can appreciate
those values, maybe through the interactions with
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you or you know your your own
personality. But then you hit a point
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where it doesn't scale anymore and you
don't know everybody and not everybody knows you,
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so the connection with the values that
you've articulated becomes much harder to attach
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to, you know, and that
stopped scaling for us here at schedule for
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a while, I'd say, and
then we made a really deliberate decision to
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say, look, this is no
longer and this can no longer be like
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my personality or my own resonance with
like the values that I copy and pasted
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right at the start, and we
have to kind of get together collectively and
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think about what are the values that
are important to us. And we went
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through an exercise together as a company
and really kind of explored the stories and
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the anecdotes and the feelings that people
had working for the company and how could
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we really define them in a way
that kind of codified so as the bottom
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of appro yeah, it was bottoms
up and okay, you know, maybe
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a refresh on my own thinking on
a values front, and they kind of
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combined and we talked about them as
a team and, you know, here
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we are. So, you know, as a wonderful exercise to go through
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and something we're very proud of and
we've branded, you know, much broader
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definition of our culture as schedule,
our heart, and part of that,
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I think you know. To your
second question is, you know, a
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recognition that there are many stakeholders in
a company beyond the obvious ones of your
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customers and your employees and your shareholders. In that you know, I think
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we do have an impact as a
company on our communities and in the communities
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that were a part of with our
offices and the people that we employ.
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But even broader than that, like
looking at the planet and the impact that
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we're going to have on that planet. In the opportunity to invest and contribute
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across all of our stakeholders is incredibly
important and I do think it's a responsibility
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of companies and founders as they grow, you know, specifically to our users
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and how to our values, particularly
caring first kind of relate to, you
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know, our values and our customers. I think this probably comes back a
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little bit to that relationship that we
do have with our stakeholders, and one
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thing that I think anyone starting a
company has to acknowledge is, you know,
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are you building a product because of
the experiences that you have personally as
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a company? You know, so
if you're building, if we build a
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productivity tool for software engineering company or
Technology Company, then you are your own
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customer and you can inform the needs
and the inputs that go into ultimately what
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needs to be included in the product. For us, we're not a desk
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less workforce. We don't we're not
mobile as a workforce, and so you
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need to have a level of empathy
and connection to your customers and your users
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that perhaps is even deeper than any
other company that's building product for themselves initially
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and then sells it to other people, because you don't every day experience the
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challenges of deathless workforces. We're not
experiencing the challenges of people that are scheduling
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and organizing way we doubt or going
into people's Times. We don't do that.
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So you know, the level of
connection and empathy you need to have
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with your customers in a very caring
way is not only important to, you
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know, lean into this concept of
sort of stakehold of value, but also
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to deeply understand the challenges that they
have and build product to address them.
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Did that come through, I mean, when we did this bottom up approach,
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did that insight come through? The
like hey, we're not these workers
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we need. Like when we built
product at Uber for freight, we hired
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truck drivers because we didn't understand what
it was like to drive a track right
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and by the same token, I
you know, we try to involve drivers
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as much as we possibly could when
we rebuilt the driver APP. Yeah,
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I mean, yeah, one of
our other values is sort of customer driven
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and and I think that sort of
talks a lot more directly to this kind
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of concept that you need to be
very in tune and dial then with these
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needs of your customers and the users
at our customer for you know, these
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exact reasons. You just do not
know sometimes and you have to build a
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level of empathy towards the challenges they're
going through in very real ways. Cool.
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So I want to also ask you
a little bit about obviously, covid.
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We Gun couldn't do the interview without
that. COVID came about and nobody
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really saw it coming, and so
I think there, when the history will
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be written, I think every business
will have their own story, both good
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and bad, both horrendous and amazing, and for both their workers their company
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would impact it had what the learnings
we had with the journey was, since
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we're all kind of going through this
together. My grandparents both were involved in
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the war effort in World War II
and when I spoke with him about that
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experience, they said it was a
war and we were all in it together
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and we fought it together, and
so I think this moment in time is
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kind of a strange togetherness. Yet
we're obviously socially distance. So schedule.
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Oh, I think had a unique
opportunity and a challenge that came up came
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about. So I want to share
with the audience kind of how that occurred,
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the kind of history of how we
involved, got involved with by preference
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and then how that smaller project,
whether or not I was it was started
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at that time or when covid presented, as presented itself. What was the
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journey like? And then what worth
the challenge as a commercializing the platform after
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the fact from testing the vaccine.
Yeah, this was this been an interesting
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to you. The very interesting to
use very challenging to you is for kidding,
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for everyone, for a little to
jain reasons, sure, and you
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know I love this story because it
is a real, I think, manifestation
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of way your values truly tested and
challenged, but then articulated. So one
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okay, in the context of a
business. And you know, when covid
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really hit, let's say it was
kind of two to three months in,
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where I think everybody started to realize
this is real and it's not going anywhere
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and in fact it's it's a huge
problem. I mean this is now.
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Sure it's a pandemic, but people
are dying and it's and it's causing major
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issues of concern. And we done
a few things, I think, at
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the start to think about our immediate
customers, people that were with us and
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already a customer. How could we
help them out? Did they need some
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financial supporter? Did they need a
few things in the product just to help
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them transition to, say, working
always in the field to working sometimes in
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the home and doing but you know, in hell, every example, doing
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things like this in customers really are
doing things like telemedicine visits rather than in
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in the home when they could afford
to do so. And in turn,
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you know, the machinations made sense. So there are a few smaller things
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that we did. But then we
really wanted to challenge ourselves as a company
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and say who is really at the
front line of some of the big challenges
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right now that you know, the
world is going through. And we were
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talking to a company called by reference
labs in New York. They are are
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large flabotomy laboratory and they were being
contracted by governments and, you know,
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the prison system of New York,
the education system in New York, to
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just get testing happening at our scale
that no one had ever seen it before,
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and many of these testing locations were
really struggling to organize and schedule.
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The number of people that were simply
in dating like you know people was credible
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and there was traffic dams down the
street. It was very dangerous and unsafe
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for all obvious reasons. And we
said, look, I think we can
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help. I think the fundamentals of
what we built about around our platform,
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the challenges that we've always solved for
the last, you know, five years,
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could really lend themselves to what a
solution could look like here. Why
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don't we do that for free?
Why don't we just try and figure that
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out and give me two weeks?
I'll work with the team and just see
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if what we can come back was
like a covid hack at that. Yeah,
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exactly. I mean it really was. We just found over testing was
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the tip of this spear. That
was kind of like the biggest problem.
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Yeah, because we did have a
vaccine yet. We just needed to find
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out where the virus was, yeah, where it was being amplified, yeah,
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and how to get under control in
those places. Yeah, and and
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by our reference labs was, you
know, one of the the companies were
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doing that at scale. And so
it was kind of when we started the
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company, we sort of just said, well, what are the problems?
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Could we come back to you in
a week and with a possible solution,
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even just a design of a solution? Okay, if that made sense,
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and it did, and they,
you know, they said Yeah, let's
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do this, and so we then
built it. I think it took him
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another, you know, three or
four weeks and we stood it up on
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the platform and then, you know, that became one of the massive cornerstone
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for how then they were able to
scale and we worked with a few other
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organizations to help them tested scale that
quickly. Then Genesis into vaccine administration.
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Let's go, and right government's all
over the world were starting to think about
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the challenges of how do you allow
members of the public to manage and administer
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their own appointments arrive on time in
safe, you know, with a level
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of safety that probably wasn't even seen
during the first waves of both testing and
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vaccination. So it was an amazing
opportunity and I think to date now we've
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helped with, helped schedule and facilitate
more than thirty seven million vaccine appointments all
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over the world. So it's thirty
seven million being an incredible thing to be
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a part of, an incredible amount
of pressure and stress for all the right
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reasons, but also an amazing opportunity
to help. And what's the volume?
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So users like me, when I
scheduled my appointment, Yep, on on
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my turn for California, I was
a schedule user at that point. Awesome,
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really, is that? That's I
was using the service to do.
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That's right. Yeah, amazing.
Yeah, and I've read somewhere that it
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was the scale was six ender transactions
a second or something like that. At
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its speak, it was pretty,
you know, it was extremely high throughput.
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Yeah, and it's and it's not
just high through like a visiting a
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website at that kind of scale is
sort of like all right, but then
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when you've got to at that velocity, make sure that you can present information
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to the user that was accurate and
accurately presented what was happening on the ground.
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And very complex sort of overlap between, you know, concepts like the
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supply of vaccine at the time.
All the right I've tested. Are Any
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the appointment? Are They not getting
get the appointment? Are they eligible?
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Yeah, and the even the physical
throughput in the capacity of a venue or
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a location. You know, dodger
stadium in La is very different to maybe
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a local fire station in Marine.
You are must Ay. Yeah, sure.
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So these kind of very complex paradigms. You know, we had to
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kind of surface at two millions of
people at a time and make sure that
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they could, you know, effectively
use a system. So yeah, very,
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very commle know, complex and interesting
challenges dissolved, but we got there.
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We've made a lot of progress that
it seems like it's two steps forward
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on step back. Sometimes. We're
clearly not through it yet, but we're
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starting to turn the corner in some
ways. YEA, and I want to
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shift here's a little bit about some
broader trends that you think you're beginning to
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see and have the opportunity to work
towards. So for the future, Matt,
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what do you think? How do
how do you think technology can kind
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of help workers in the future?
What do you think that market opportunity is
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for this kind of workforce? What
are some of the top trends you're seeing
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right now? Well, I think
death was work is generally a still one
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of the most underinvested segments of the
workforce, but they also happened to be
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the largest right and you know,
eighty percent of the global workforce doesn't sit
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in an office and behind a desk. And yet when you look at the
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sort of you you overlay that with
the amount of investment that's been made in
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desktop computing technology and and web sort
of desktop focus technology that you and I
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use every day. I mean at
the difference. Is Signal Nivigant and where's
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the Desk Force Tower? That's workforce
tower. Yeah, I mean, you
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know, I think, I think
there's, you know, still a huge
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gap in both the investments and the
capabilities of technology and, you know,
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the mediums that are accessible to people
that don't work in an office, and
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that still remains, I think,
our biggest mission. How do we build
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the platform to ultimately amplify enhanced and
in rich deslos workers everywhere, whether they're
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a mobile healthcare worker or whether they're, you know, a field service,
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manufacturing break fixed worker or retail hospitality
worker, for example. You know,
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there are platforms for everything else that
exists in the cloud and we want to
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keep building this kind of leading,
world class platform for this segment of the
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workforce at scale. You know,
I think in terms of things that have
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happened recently and maybe trends that have
come out of Covid I think people that
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work in an office, and maybe
we're responsible for the looking after big portions
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of the Deste workforced in the past, have, I hope, a greater
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level of empathy with the level of
disconnectedness that desk less workers have and have
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always had, actually, you know, somewhat by design and as we all
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kind of retreated into our homes and
had to find new ways of engaging and
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relating to one another and communicating with
one another, those challenges of existed for
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destiny. Well, it's been there
for forever. I'm not an age q
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anymore, okay, I'm just connected, and now that path is well understood
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by people who. Wait a minute, I'm not connected to my team anymore,
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or how do I how do I
keep that going? Yeah, and
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for brands and companies where engagement and
connectivity with their workforce is important and critical.
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You know, this is a great
awakening, I think, in terms
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of realizing the challenge that exist for
people that are inherently disconnected all the time
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from each other. And so how
does communication, collaboration, engagement amplify human
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productivity and efficiency and effectiveness and happiness
work? And that's, I think,
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a trend that we keep leaning into
and I think is emerged through some of
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this as well. See you're here
to here first the knit, the next
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great awakening. Well, I wanted
to thank you for joining us today and
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I want to thank my guest,
Matt Fairhurst, Co founder and CEO of
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schedule. Oh, and I hope
to hear from you off soon and hope
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you come back for our next episode. Thanks to it. Would love to
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be back. This certainly way more
we could talk about. Absolutely see as
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00:27:41.720 --> 00:27:48.269
soon you've been listening to the modern
workforce, the podcast for deskless workforce innovators
391
00:27:48.309 --> 00:27:51.829
by schedule Oh, keep connected with
us by subscribing to the show and your
392
00:27:51.869 --> 00:27:56.309
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393
00:27:56.390 --> 00:28:00.380
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394
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helps us keep delivering the latest and
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00:28:06.140 --> 00:28:07.220
Until next time,
