The term “gig economy” was coined around 2009, during the Great Recession, to address the growing number of people making or supplementing their living through a series of part-time, freelance or consulting engagements.
During the economic downturn, gigs were a way of making extra money, but over the last ten years it has become a career path that many choose in order to not just make a living, but be their own bosses. In fact, a May 2017 study from Intuit forecasts that by 2020, 43 percent of American workers would be independent contractors
Many companies are even shifting their own structures to incorporate more contractors in order to keep their overhead costs lower. Remote work tools and the increasingly paperless processes of most organizations have helped make this arrangement more practical for workers and managers.
The proliferation of online sites and mobile applications designed to facilitate contract employment has contributed to the growth of the gig economy as well. Uber was one of the pioneers, quickly followed by other ridesharing companies, as well as apps like TaskRabbit, Fiverr and Thumbtack.
So with contracting becoming more of a norm than an anomaly and technology helping make finding and executing work easier, what challenges do freelancers face navigating the gig economy?
Lack of traditional employment benefits (health insurance, etc.) and other perks, as well as instability of income, have always come with the territory of non-full time work. While some companies that rely heavily on contractors have adjusted their practices to account for those gaps (offering access to health plans and corporate discounts and the like), the fact remains that freelancers are typically left on their own.
They have no administrative services, so they must handle their own accounting, scheduling and whatever other logistics associated with their particular fields. There is no sales or marketing department to help them build their businesses, so they must take that task on too, and constantly look for new clients while also plan, complete, and deliver the jobs of their current clients.
They have no legal services, so that must be retained independently should the need arise. They have no human resources department, so should harassment or discrimination occur with a manager or colleague, there is often very little recourse.
With all these obstacles, why would anyone choose to be a freelancer?
Sure you’re often working from home, avoiding the commute and bad break room coffee, but that’s by no means the only benefit. Ultimately, freelancing is an attractive option because there is so much opportunity to build a lucrative and fulfilling career doing something you care about and enjoy doing.
In her book, The Million Dollar One Person Business, entrepreneur Elaine Pofeldt insists that it is possible to “make great money, work the way you like, have the life you want,” but that freelancers have to be creative and use the tools at their disposal to build a solid business.
Making a million a year is not necessarily within reach for all freelancers, but many younger, tech-savvy workforce, like freelancing specially because they also want to have more control over their work-life balance and pursue personal goals alongside professional ones, which freelancing can be a great way to achieve that.
When you’re confined to a single job description, you can end up personally and professionally stifled. But freelancers have the opportunity to work with clients around the globe, thanks to digital communication and workflow tools. They have the opportunity to expand their skillsets, pivot to new career paths and explore potentials.
And doing just that will help them to be more attractive to potential employers. Having to manage sales and marketing with all other business aspects is not easy, but certainly a great way to learn to drum up leads, advertise their offerings and close deals, which many traditional employees never get a chance to learn or even practice. So no matter your field, it’s a good idea to brush up on some marketing techniques, especially those that can be accomplished using free or low cost online tools like social media, and SEO tools to drive traffic to your website and social media.
Having to diversify your skills and make yourself indispensable to your employers in more ways than one is another great journey you explore when freelancing. If you’re a writer, try learning more about code and design to enable you to transition into digital content and web work, as many organizations have begun to create these kind of multidisciplinary roles.
And what about those tools?
Freelance marketplaces are nothing new, especially for professional services like accounting, writing, marketing, etc. but they are beginning to take a different structure to accommodate a growing force of contractors and their evolving needs. They allow for networking with other contractors, which can be extremely useful for access to training, augmenting your own services or creating the net of administrative, legal, financial, etc. support that you are lacking without a traditional structure.
They also have begun to offer a more decentralized platform that enables peer-to-peer interaction and transaction, that keeps middlemen out of the equation, letting freelancers keep more of their own profits and giving employers unimpeded access to talent.
The great thing about freelancing is that the opportunities really are unlimited. You don’t need to have startup capital or an official office; you can just jump in with little to no barriers to entry. And it’s advisable to get started as soon as possible. Get your profiles up; get some jobs under your belt, post work examples and some ratings and testimonials from your clients to lend you credibility.
The “gig economy” is really not a new phenomenon. However, it is expanding and evolving to allow for a new kind of employment where the worker is in charge of their own processes and time, and are primarily responsible to “deliver results”, which is what matters the most to almost every employer. Navigating the gig economy in the digital era means not only utilizing digital tools to find and execute work, but also actually shifting the way we look at professionalism. Clocking in and sitting in a cubicle is no longer the default means of productivity, and you don’t have to wait for a hiring manager to give you a full-time job in order to be employed. As a freelancer, you can have a much more adventurous journey in your career, meet with many more people and explore many more opportunities, and that is a way of life that more and more people are choosing nowadays.
