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Blockchain is not just the technology behind the Bitcoin craze. It could also mean the end of the middle manager. LARS HAGBERG / AFP / Getty Images
The buzz around the blockchain has reached inevitable levels – from the cryptocurrencies to the tracing from which your Thanksgiving turkey comes, it seems that everyone is in turmoil. And while most require a ten-year vision to consider the future of Bitcoin and if token sales can replace risk capital, a large and disruptive move is already here: blockchain could mean the end of the middle manager.
For decades, middle managers have been critical to the operational flow of many American companies. They take the strategic vision of senior management and ensure that it is performed on a functional level, day by day. Responsibilities vary but generally include performance and quality assurance, compensation management and facilitator service.
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Traditionalists claim that this is a necessary component of an organization, which frees up senior management to think strategically and move away from the everyday, while building a talent bench for the next generation of senior managers. The detractors ask what a middle manager actually adds to the bottom line, indicating a return to investment that is unclear or difficult to define.
The truth, as often happens, is somewhere in the middle. But it may not matter.
Many organizations have clear, tangible and quantifiable key performance indicators for daily functions such as closed sales or shipped widgets. With the advent of smart contracts on blockchain, it is clear: robots are not the only ones to focus on your work. Blockchain technology is too much.
An intelligent contract is a code designed to facilitate, verify or enforce the performance of the set terms. This code simply acts as a trusted facilitator between two parties and, implemented with blockchain technology, is a foolproof executor of the terms set 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. No holiday time, office policy or salary is required.
In particular, this is not a distant concept – it is something that, in many situations, could be implemented tomorrow.
A company that is already implementing a solution for intelligent contract verification work is HUMAN Protocol, which offers a new machine intelligence approach, allowing machines to ask humans for the data they need to improve. HUMAN is implementing its user interface that lists the relevant activities and parameters (including compensation). An operator claims an activity using this dashboard, completes the job, the job is checked by colleagues for the quality and a compensation is issued.
The intelligent contract offers an almost impossible efficiency to combine with human effort, especially when quality is verified. The first public effort of the HUMAN protocol, hCaptcha, works by crowdsourcing image labeling by implementing a substitute for the reCAPTCHA "Sei un robot" puzzles that many of us experience every day. In these hCaptcha campaigns, HUMAN could ask 200 users if an image contains a hydrant or a cat, relying on the human wisdom of the crowd. Given a statistically satisfactory number of responses, the smart contract will eventually take the carefully labeled image into consideration and compensate workers accordingly.
Tasks such as image labeling are fruitless and efforts like the HUMAN protocol are just the beginning. Deloitte has published a blog that describes the potential impact of blockchain on human resources, from payroll and certification verification to digital process management. The right blockchain and a series of smart contracts could take the place of different human resources positions in a large organization.
It has been estimated that robots could steal up to 800 million jobs globally within the next 13 years, mainly in manufacturing and manual labor, but with smart contracts and blockchain technology, it is clear that white-collar workers must also be on alert.
