Is freelancing the future of work?
We all have been seeing this trend for a long time now. Some experts say that there will be 86.5 million freelancers in the U.S. alone by 2027. And that will make over 50% of the total workforce.
Some time ago I used to freelance myself. It was a great experience and I felt less stressed last year when we all went remote since working from home was familiar to me.
Coronacrisis has forced the trend to evolve even faster — many people lost their jobs and turned to freelancing as a means to survive. But now that we are over a year into pandemic, the dust has settled and both employers and freelancers see a lot of advantages in this model.
However we miss our water cooler chats, the flexibility of remote (and freelance) work cannot be ignored. [Click to tweet]
And here’s why:
1.The remote work is here to stay.
Upwork survey says that it is estimated that “56.8 percent of Americans are still working from home at least some of the time.” We have never expected it but here we are — having Zoom calls with coffee cups in one hand and laptop keypads at the other. I daily talk to people from at least 5 locations and never have given it some thought until about now :) Some 1 year ago I myself was persuaded that co-located teams perform better and, therefore, I tried hiring people from the same location. It was sometimes hard because there wasn’t the right mix of skills and experience available at the local market. Today, it is no longer a priority and, fortunately, we have Internet and software at our disposal. It would’ve been a great challenge if we only had a pen and paper; but using modern tools, such as MyDone, could make our life much much easier.
2. Freelancing is viewed as a respectable career choice.
And not just a part-time job for additional money sake. This means that people now more often choose freelancing over full-time employment, build their reputation and visibility just like small businesses are. No doubt, it will result in a better quality of the services they provide. For enterprises it means an easy access the best world talents.
3. A large variety of services are now offered online.
Most of the freelance offerings before Covid-19 were tech-related. Now we noticed that more and more new categories appear on freelance platforms such Fiverr, Upwork or Toptal. I my personal life I regularly hire people to clean, deliver groceries and even dig my car from out of the snow :) Businesses are now adapting the very same model. For instance, a friend of mine who works in a catering business regularly hires waiters for events; a retailer I know outsource delivery services; I even know a company which hired a freelance project manager for its team. So whatever service you might need to successfully run your business is available out there, as close as one click away.
4. Bootstrapping.
Even though the economy is slowly recovering, business will still suffer from the pandemic consequences in the nearest future. According to the report from Upwork, companies refrain from hiring more employees. Nevertheless, on the way to full recovery and growth, there’s still work to be done — and here’s when companies turn to independent talent for help. The economic advantages are clear — more cost-effective labor, specialized skills and experience, temporary nature of workload all result in increased profit margins. Any crisis should be seen as opportunity — for enterprises Covid is an opportunity to reevaluate the ways of managing a business, eliminate inefficiencies and start adding more value to customers.
5. Productivity and agility.
It is clear (and the chart from Upwork proves it) that vendors and freelancers are crucially important to create sustainable business nowadays.
Business agility is now required more than ever. Responding to change is possible by adopting new strategies. For instance, companies choose to be more transparent [reference to previous article], implement new workforce structures and management styles, experiment with hybrid approaches, balance between offline and online. But yet it is a hard task. Using tools such as Zoom, Whatsapp or MyDone is only a part of the solution. We are yet to establish the best practices of managing business remotely but in 10 years time we’ll wonder that this problem has ever existed.
So is the future of work freelance? Yes and no. We will see more and more blended approaches in running a company. But having a choice is always good, isn’t it?
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