I grew up watching two of them every day — my mother working long hours in a shoe factory, and my father driving a truck through all kinds of weather. Their work wasn’t glamorous, but it was essential. I saw first-hand how unpredictable schedules, physical demands, and economic pressures shaped not only their jobs but also our family’s daily life. Those experiences taught me about the gap between the way technology is designed and the way most of the world actually works.
Nearly 80% of the global workforce is shift-based, yet they remain largely invisible to the innovation economy. While knowledge workers enjoy the benefits of remote tools, flexible hours, and automation, frontline industries are still grappling with burnout, staffing shortages, and unpredictable hours. And that gap is only widening, with less than 1% of technology investment going toward the people who work on their feet.
Recently, I spent a day shadowing baristas at one of our customers’ locations. I watched how something as small as a confusing schedule or a delayed break could ripple through the day, affecting not just the worker’s mood but also the team’s energy and the customer’s experience. Real progress requires proximity; you have to see the friction to understand it.
One barista told me, “I want to be the person who guides you through your order and gets you exactly what you want.” That’s not just about coffee — it’s about pride in the work. The question for us as innovators is: Are we building systems that protect that pride or chip away at it?
Christensen’s framework offers a way forward: start with the real “job” people are hiring your product to do. Not the imagined job in your pitch deck, but the actual one in their lives. If we applied that lens to the workforce, we’d see the problem clearly: Many decision-makers have never experienced the unpredictability of shift work, the juggling of multiple jobs, or the anxiety of waiting for next week’s schedule — yet they’re designing solutions for these very challenges.
My challenge to builders, investors, and innovators is this: broaden your definition of “user.” Go to the cafe at 6 a.m. Talk to a nurse on their break. Watch a store manager handle a last-minute change from the parking lot. Listen. Then design with that reality in mind.
The same care we bring to designing for desk workers – intuitive tools, real-time insights, delight in the details — should be the baseline for the people who keep the world running. When we start there, we don’t just make work better. We build a future of work that actually reflects how most of the world works.
Because if we’re serious about shaping the future, we have to start where the work actually happens — with the real jobs to be done.
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