Winning well-paying projects at big companies may soon get easier for highly-skilled, independent professionals.
As Deloitte’s new 2019 Global Human Capital Trends Report points out, the alternative workforce—made up of freelancers, contractors and gig workers—has gone mainstream as talent markets have tightened. Organizations are starting to look more strategically at the full gamut of work arrangements, including alternative ones, as they plan their growth.
With the number of self-employed people in the U.S. expected to hit 42 million by 2020 and freelancers the fastest growing labor group in the U.K., many organizations are starting to embrace the trend when it comes to getting high-level work done. In Deloitte’s survey of nearly 10,000 people in 119 countries, 33% of respondents said their organizations are using alternative work arrangements for IT, 25% for operations, 15% for marketing and 15% for research and development.
What is driving the trend? One factor is the growth of large, general freelance platforms such as Upwork and Fivver. These platforms have increasingly focused on attracting enterprise clients and workers with the capabilities to serve them.
“It’s possible for organizations to tap into these platforms to find highly-skilled workers,” says Steven Hatfield, a principal at Deloitte who is global future of work leader.
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