Drones: The Skyborne Workforce Reshaping the Future of Work
From warehouse skies to frontline operations, a new airborne workforce is rewriting the rules of labor, productivity, and human opportunity.
Drones have been in the conversation in America and many nations for a number of years. I can personally remember watching an old television show going back to the early 2000s that had a storyline involving drones; I’m sure if we went even further back, we would likely see additional examples, too.
But instead of looking backwards, let’s instead look at drones as a future of work trend because it definitely has potential for shaking up certain things that we take for granted. With futuristic things, sometimes we end up in a VUCA** environment …
** VUCA = volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity; without being mindful of one, or more, of these, you could find yourself being unncessarily anxious or fearful.
Let’s take off with a series of links spotlighting fresh stories about the ongoing development of this airborne workforce:
So, as these stories clearly show us, drones have boundless potential to displace delivery drivers and will also have a measurable impact on the transportation footprint. Drones will also affect the way we build roads and construct supply chains. There’s a lot of possibilities here which are all interlinked.
Perhaps the biggest effect is the ripple throughout economic sectors and industries which are full of processes and like industrial age ways of doing things that we have taken for granted for far too long, and have begun to constrain our potential.
Think about getting groceries delivered from your nearby grocery store, maybe a Piggly Wiggly, Kroger, or Albertson’s. Some stores have already experimented with scaling back their human staff to just a handful of people. And now, many of them offer their own delivery service or contract this service with third parties (think Instacart, Uber Eats, DoorDash).
These services deliver groceries and takeout delivery, so adding in drones here would transform a big % of the restaurant industry. The use of drones for such common services will result in less people jumping in vehicles which will then change traffic patterns which will reflect in how much fuel is used, let alone reshaping the civil planning of which roads to reconstruct or even built anew!
There will also be environmental changes, which could - like in the Covid era - be a very positive shift as traffic could become more bearable and tha air more breathable, especially in urban enclaves.
Drones have also been used heavily in the real estate market for a number of years, and that will likely just continue growing. I saw a house in my old neighborhood that I lived in many years ago where most of the pictures the realtor posted online on different platforms, like Zillow, were all drone-based. There may have been a small handful taken by a human standing at ground level, yet no question, this listing was not from my mother’s generation ( Boomer )!
A ripple effect of drones in real estate? Its concurrent impact on photography. If I was in the photography world, I would consider starting a second business in drones or extend your creative brand to include drone usage, investing in some drones that you control yourself.
Drones will also be able to deliver items for natural disasters, especially for terrain in rough shape or a rural area with topographical challenges. Drones could safely air drop rescue supplies, up to a certain weight, which would offer hope to survivors until local authorities are able to send in rescue teams.
UPS, FedEx, DHL, and your national post office (USPS in America) will also absolutely be transformed in every which way by drones. We see above that UPS is clearly not acting like Blockbuster did with Netflix, nor how Kodak approached digital cameras, which will ensure they can create the bottom-up momentum in their organization to harness all of the changes to their operations, staffing levels, etc.
Like blockchain and micro-/nano-credentialing, drones are already here and picking up steam as a trend to know, and not one to fear.
Whether we start adopting their use more or not remains to be seen. But, in the meantime, fellow and aspiring entrepreneurs, consider adding drones to your inventory especially if you are in CPG, hospitality, e-commerce, or other such sectors.
If you’re interested in discussing drones as a future of work trend further, please schedule a complimentary consultation with me.
A new generation of skyborne workers is here — inspiring us to reach higher, work smarter, and redefine the very boundaries of what’s possible.
The future of work is taking flight. Are you ready to soar with it?