Partner Article

On-Demand Economy

Every era brings new ways of working. With the continuing advent of modern technology and the growth of an ‘on-demand economy’, it seems that the freelancer will soon be king.

A new study conducted by online freelance marketplace, PeoplePerHour has shown that the self-employed segment of the labour market in both the UK and USA is growing at a rate of 3.5% per year – faster than any other sector. Should this growth continue for the next five years, the implication is that half of the working population will be self-employed freelancers by 2020.

While freelance work used to be considered something of a risky business, with no guaranteed income, the improved methods of communication through high-speed internet and the burgeoning mobile industry, mean that independent experts in all sectors – writers, artists, public relations professionals, coders, accountants, designers – can reach an endless supply of customers, worldwide. Freelance workers are able to deliver a niche skill, ensuring that their customers always receive a satisfactorily high-quality service.

Although the move from employment to self-employment is closely correlated to the availability of ubiquitous and inexpensive computing power, sophisticated applications, and cloud-based services, it is also driven, in part, by a change in social habits. We now live in an ‘on-demand’ world, where a sense of consumer entitlement has drastically transformed consumer-purchasing behaviour. An adaptable, on-demand workforce is the inevitable result.

This change in working practises is beneficial to more than the consumer however. In a survey conducted by PeoplePerHour in May 2015, it was discovered that the average waste or spare capacity per day for small to medium sized businesses was 1.9 hours per person. By hiring freelance professionals as required, this wasted time has an earnings/savings potential of £6,297.17 per annum.

For individuals, freelancing also brings many benefits: the ability to work hours that suit them and their family; the ability to choose work that most suits their skill set; the ability to work literally anywhere.

Over the course of the last several years traditional specialist occupations have been becoming increasingly more refined, with highly niche subcategories of traditional roles evolving. This trend has been coined as the emergence of ‘Hyper-Specialists’, which enables firms to divide work into component parts that can then be subcontracted to hyper-specialists around the globe. With a corresponding growth in freelance labour, there has been a 75% reduction in transaction costs for SMEs, allowing them to invest those savings into business development.

Xenios Thrasyvoulou says: The self-employed workforce is growing by the day, and On-Demand services are being required more and more. Speed and accessibility are today’s buzzwords and it’s no different when making recruitment decisions. It is literally a whole new economy in the making. It’s the future.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by VP .