The freelance economy is going through a phase of radical growth and transformation. We explore some of the more fundamental trends and shifts utilizing data and survey results published by PeoplePerHour.com – the largest marketplace for freelancers and small businesses in Europe with over 64,000 registered users in over 150 countries.
At the early stages of freelance hiring, businesses took advantage of the web as the means of transcending geographic boundaries, making the world more ‘flat’ and reaching low-cost offshore talent in the East. However, whilst this still remains a big market, with the rise in availability of highly skilled UK freelancers, we are seeing the trend turn the other way.
As emerging economies are growing and developing an SME sector, they look to do what the organizations at the top of their food chain did: bring on best practice from the West. Whilst the large organizations would hire the ‘McKinseys’ of this world to do so, the budding small businesses resort to freelance talent in the West.
Latest statistics from PeoplePerHour show that:
Flexibility is currently cited by businesses as the chief reason for resorting to freelancers. Whilst it is still true that freelancers appeal to businesses because they are cost-effective, it is no longer just about getting work done cheaply, or about finding the cheapest possible solution. The flexibility factor has now outweighed the cost-saving factor. Having the opportunity to get things done as and when needed, without the cost – both in terms of money and time – of firing, is invaluable to businesses.
75% of businesses cite flexibility as more important than cost-saving.
The freelance way of working has proved itself as an established, long-term trend and not just a recessionary fad as thought by many. Virtual working is now part of the DNA of start-ups, setting themselves up from the get-go as virtual set-ups with a distributed workforce of freelance talent across the world. These are as important as their in house team and indeed in many cases as permanent. Deploying freelancers is shifting from the ad hoc cost-slashing solution to the de facto way of doing things. And naturally quality takes precedence.
Currently:
Freelancing was initially confined to certain skills sectors like IT — the early adopters — or industries like Journalism that were accustomed to working that way. Now, the market is crossing that chasm and leap-frogging into sectors and skill-sets that were previously scarce in the freelance economy. Boosted by a growing complexity of the internet and technology in general, the long tail is as important now in skills as it ever was.
Start ups are moving from having an all-round marketer in house, to a virtual team of freelancers each specializing in different fields like SEO, SEM, social media, blogging, copy-writing etc, and even these are splitting up into finer more granular resolution like link-building broken down into different verticals and geographies. These start ups ate now operating as mini conglomerates, with a whole raft of specialization at their finger-tips, otherwise inaccessible, utilized on-demand at the click of a button.
The way we work is changing and the freelance economy is at the centre of that. Companies — mostly at the smaller more nimble end (for now) -– are radically embracing the growing availability of freelance talent and the connectivity the web is providing to do a lot more than just save cost. It is no surprise that 81% of small businesses report that they are reluctant to employ more full-time staff in the near future, opting to hire freelancers instead.
Image by jonmatthew photography ~ cc
