Off-balance sheet worker is the term Deloitte uses for contingent workers, such as freelancers, independent contractors and other non-employees.
They describe this in their recent article Forces of Change: The Future of Work. In it they list two powerful forces shaping workforces and workplaces:
"the growing adoption of artificial intelligence in the workplace and the expansion of the workforce to include both on- and off-balance-sheet talent."
As their chart below shows (click to enlarge), they see the future workforce being made up of four types of workers.
More interesting is their view about how the relationship between corporations and off-balance sheet workers is going to evolve.
They see corporations hiring two broad types of independent workers. One group - the transactional remote worker - is hired for short term assignments, often through an app or some 3rd party platform. Think hiring people via Amazon Turk to categorize pictures, etc.
The other group - outside contractors - will increasingly work on hybrid teams with traditional employees.
These outside contractors will also tend to stay connected with their client organizations for longer periods of time. Key quote:
As the alternative worker shifts to more rapidly evolving work, the way that work is done is likely to change, moving from short-term transactional remote worker to longer-term relationships that help to accelerate learning and performance improvement.
This shift to longer term relationships between independent contractors and hiring organizations will have a wide range of implications for hiring organizations. We've been exploring this for several years as part of our ongoing "client of choice" research we've conducted with MBO Partners.
We recently finished another study in this research series and will have more on this topic in the near future.
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