What Does the Gig Economy Mean for You?
We’ve heard a lot about the gig economy in the UK this week, but the focus has been on workers caught out with unfavourable conditions at the bottom of the wage scale. There is work to be done to fix some of the issues they face, but I think policy makers are missing the bigger issue.
It’s not just low skilled or low paid jobs that are moving in this direction, I believe white collar roles will also make a more pronounced shift towards less traditional work structures.
I think we will see more project and portfolio roles amongst accountants, lawyers, engineers and other skilled professionals — and not just because that’s what companies are demanding, but because it works for the individuals too.
As small businesses, you need to be ready for these shifting work patterns, not because they are going to take away stability, but because they are going to empower you in ways that we haven’t seen before.
Staff on Demand
I was fortunate enough to attend the the ExO Summit this year and hear Salim Ismail and his team at ExO Works talk about creating exponential organisations (organisations whose impact is at least 10x larger than their peers through leverage of new organisational techniques).
What I learned from the team and the incredible gathering of organisational leaders needs a post all to itself, but one of the ten attributes they identified as being key to exponential organisations is that of ‘Staff on Demand’, in essence gig workers.
These are freelancers that come into organisations on a needs basis, providing a service for a fixed project, or for less than full time because that’s all your business requires — and there are literally millions of freelancers out there in the UK.
Why is this important to small businesses?
Amidst the numerous challenges of running a small business, one of the toughest is knowing when or how to take on talent to support your needs.
In the old economy, this meant jumping on LinkedIn, Monster or ringing up a recruitment agency and competing in a crowded market to secure the right talent for your organisation, with all the inherent issues that ensue — high costs, possibility that they don’t fit your company’s culture or the possibility that they are actually not at all suited to the role at all.
Staff on Demand means hiring freelance talent as and when you need it, thus giving you the flexibility to scale up and down at will with all the inherent benefits to your costs that this entails.
Not only this, but instead of risking taking on someone mediocre full time (because you can’t afford the best, or you’re not yet ready for that sort of commitment), you can take on the best people when you need to, and if you’re not happy, easily switch to someone else.
All of a sudden, you can keep a control of your cost base whilst still achieving your goals.
But…
As the recent review suggests, you need to be conscious about how you hire staff on demand and ensure that you aren’t simply trying to avoid paying employers’ National Insurance or providing other statutory benefits. Check out HMRC’s guidance here.
So in a nutshell, the gig economy, or staff on demand is all about giving flexibility to both the company and the individual, giving small businesses access to great talent far more affordably and giving individuals the ability to work to their schedule and in the roles they want to work in.
Are you a startup, SME or Scale-Up in the UK? Or indeed, are you someone in or considering joining the gig economy?
I’d love to hear about your perspectives!
