In our fast-paced modern era, a shift in business culture and environment has been noticeable over the last years. The Gig-economy – the rise of freelancing positions in the job market – is not just a trend anymore, it’s becoming a normality.
Intuit – an American financial and business software company – predicts that, by 2020, 40 percent of all American workers will be independent contractors. In the UK, it’s estimated that 5 million people already work with these types of contracts. As many as 81% of traditional workers that the Upwork and the Freelancers Union surveyed said they would “be willing to do additional work outside of [their] primary job if it was available and enabled [them] to make more money.” In France, 30% of direct sellers do it as complementary work and 60% of French direct selling companies work with freelancers.
With these figures in mind, the question then becomes: Why are freelancing contracts becoming more and more popular? The classic pattern of a 9-5 job, although bringing more job security to employees, seems outdated in a period where people want to focus on personal projects and are willing to give more importance to flexibility and rewards rather than job-security.
The Gig-economy movement is bringing massive changes to the way people work and, as a result, it is also bringing major changes to how companies operate. Traditionally, freelancing was only associated with creative positions (designers, artists, video producers, …) but today, the Gig-economy shows that any type of position can be done as a freelancer (even senior roles or financial positions). According to Sanjay Sathe – CEO of RiseSmart – in an interview with Fast Company, making space for gig-work in a business will allow it to be sharper and more responsive towards the market: “While 67% of companies do presently limit the number of these types of positions, according to 2016 Workforce for the Future Survey, having gig positions means they are able to onboard new talent and off-board unneeded skills without the burden of employment taxes and paperwork.”
Here at tawkr we are proud to stand as pioneers of the Gig-economy movement, having started working with freelancers over 20 years ago. This allows us to operate in line with the current realities of Millennials an their working behaviors: today, people tend to regularly change jobs throughout their working lives. It’s what Faith Popcorn (interviewed by Fast Company) calls the “Living in the Blur” paradigm. “It’s a tech-enabled, nomadic existence in which there’s a constant mix of business and pleasure; where traveling for a job is no problem in a Sharing Economy.”
Today, the companies are already moving in this direction. They are realizing they can find the skills and workforce they need from freelancing positions. As the Boston Globe wrote recently: “Whether they see the workplace changes as fundamentally positive or negative, experts agree that they need more research, because the gig economy isn’t going away. In any economy, the name of the game is getting work done efficiently at the lowest cost.” 2017, will be a game changer regarding Gig-Economy evolution, and either you’re ready to jump on the bandwagon or you’ll let it go past you. Evolution is coming, and tawkr is ready, are you?
Sources: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/gig-economy https://www.fastcompany.com/3066905/how-the-gig-economy-will-change-in-2017 http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38930048