The global HR consulting firm Mercer recently released its Global Talent Trends 2022 study report.
One of their findings is that 60% of C-suite executives surveyed expect gig workers will substantially replace full-time employees at their company within the next three years.
More broadly, the Mercer study found that firms and executives are working to increase their talent agility and flexibility to respond to economic changes more quickly.
And the use of gig workers - freelancers, independent contractors, and other forms of nonemployee labor - increases a firm's agility and flexibility.
This data illustrates the sea change in c-suite thinking about gig workers over the past 5-7 years.
In 2015, few senior executives knew much about their firm's use of gig workers.
We know this because, in 2015, we started a research project to find out how c-suite executives viewed nonemployee labor. We ended the study after interviewing c-suite executives from about a dozen corporations.
We ended the study because none of the executives interviewed knew much or cared much about their firm's current or future use of contingent workers.
The use of gig workers and other forms of nonemployee labor simply wasn't considered important enough for senior execs to focus on back then.
But as the Mercer study shows, now there's a lot of c-suite focus on their firm's use of gig workers.
BTW, while we agree that most organizations will increase their use of gig workers over the next three years, we doubt they will substantially replace their full-time employees with them over that timeframe.
Three years is not enough time for most firms to accomplish such a significant workforce shift.
We think this is an excellent example of people overestimating future rates of change.
This is a common issue with asking about the future in surveys. Most people - and even c-suite occupants - underestimate how long substantial changes take.
In the technology world, this is referred to as Amara's Law, which states:
"We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."
But it also applies to other types of change, especially second-order effects from technological change - which includes the rise of the gig economy.
