Table of Contents
On one hand, contingent work has been affected by the pandemic in many different ways, but on the other hand, this approach to work and collaboration has also affected the future of the workplace as a whole. Since more companies have been relying on contract and project-based workers in the wake of the pandemic, we’ve seen a significant uptake in the demand for contract workers. Then again, many people have lost their permanent positions as large-scale corporations have been forced to reduce their employee hubs, and turn to, you’ve guessed it, contract workers instead.
What this means is that even people who have spent years, if not decades, building their careers in permanent employment positions are now switching to contingent work. All of these changes have been spurred by the pandemic, but many believe that they’ve been a long time coming. Here are a few main ways in which we expect the future of contingent work to change due to this health crisis.
Changing the way companies brand themselves
To make sure they appeal to contingent workers, brands will rethink their employer branding in the post-pandemic environment. This means that everything from their digital presence, SEO, all the way to how they define roles and positions will change in order to accommodate the growing contingent workforce.
The goal is to help workers find and recognize the perks that these brands can offer to their external staff. Even your extended and remote workers want to feel like members of your organization, even if it’s merely temporary, and they want to know that their rights are secured. Brands will now change how they position themselves in order to appeal to this rapidly growing demographic.
A growing contingent workforce requires advanced solutions
It’s one thing to empower diversity when you’re hiring locally and to embrace inclusion to expand your business, but it becomes an entirely different issue when those workers want to work on a contract basis. Finding them, onboarding and offboarding them successfully and earning their trust for potential future work is a challenge that will become more prevalent in the months and years to come.
To diminish the complications related to such processes, more businesses are turning to professional contractor workforce solutions in Europe and beyond, so that they can delegate the entire hiring cycle to experts. This branch of work will flourish in the future, to help contract workers find trustworthy employers, but also to simplify on and offboarding for larger companies who regularly rely on contingent workers.
Access to a global talent pool for remote businesses
The pandemic has, on one hand, forced many companies to let entire departments go, while on the other hand, it has caused a surge of now unemployed people to start working for global instead of local companies. Remote and contingent work is now growing hand in hand, pushing brands to look beyond their local employee opportunities.
It seems that the closing of borders has actually caused the opening of those same borders in a virtual sense: as a result of the pandemic, contract workers are now much more present on online hiring platforms and much more open to the idea of working for international brands.
Shifting to a new way of defining contingent worker rates
Calculating business rates is one thing, but for contract workers, their time, talent, and accumulated expertise are something entirely different. Add to that, a crisis of these proportions means that every contract worker will become much more prudent with how they determine their fees. This, in turn, will make sure they can both offer competitive prices and still retain the right level of financial security that they need.
With access to a global talent pool, businesses will most certainly have more options when it comes to hiring per project. However, since more companies are relying on contingent workers both in the US and in Europe, the competition will help some of the workers push their prices up and it will allow them to work only for a select few companies that they genuinely like.
Leveraging technology for better collaboration
Businesses hiring externally, even temporarily will need to start using digital tools such as project management software and rostering solutions to keep track of their workforce. Managing and monitoring your organization with contingent workers in the mix is a challenge, but new software is emerging that will help companies achieve even greater levels of productivity than before.
Add to that, brands will now look for creative digital ways to set up team-building sessions in order to build stronger bonds with their contingent workers. Integrating them into the culture of your business will be essential if you want to retain their loyalty when and if a better offer comes along.
Managing a contingent workforce in addition to your full-time employees is no easy feat. Finding the finest candidates will become a greater challenge, since individuals will be able to pick and choose the businesses they work for in this capacity, so companies will need to come up with the right perks to attract this growing workforce. As you can see, the playing field is rapidly changing, but with the right strategy, your business can definitely continue growing with the help of contingent work, and retain its position in the market in 2021 and beyond.
