MBO Partners Contingent Labor Imperative covers a recent study looking at the use of contingent labor by large corporations (those with 1,000 or more employees).
This is the second year of this study, and Emergent Research (that's us) worked with MBO Partners on this project.
The study covers much ground, including contingent labor's share of corporate workforces, reasons for using contingent labor, challenges with using contingent labor, and the use of direct sourcing of freelancers and other forms of contingent labor.
But what we found most interesting was the year-over-year growth in the use of private freelance marketplaces — company branded and operated talent platforms that directly connect vetted freelancers with the firm's hiring managers.
As the study table below (click to enlarge) shows, 54% of firms surveyed reported using private freelance marketplaces. This is up from just 32% in 2021.
Also, users of private freelance marketplaces report broader and more intensive use of private freelance marketplaces.
The study table below shows that 71% of companies that use private freelance marketplaces use them in 3 or more areas across their organization, compared to just 42% in 2020.
There a several reasons for this surge in the use of private freelance marketplaces.
Companies have increased their use of contingent labor to access specialized labor, find hard-to-hire talent, and increase their workforce agility and flexibility.
The pandemic-induced shift to remote work has also increased the use of all things online, including private freelance marketplaces.
But a significant reason is the ability of firms to establish a pool of known and vetted external talent that can be confidently reused across the firm.
This leads to reduced sourcing costs and faster fill times - and more importantly, because the firm vets and reuses the freelancers, higher work quality.
In our 2016 Harvard Business Review article How PwC and The Washington Post Are Finding and Hiring External Talent, we covered some of the first corporations experimenting with private freelance marketplaces.
Six years later, the use of private freelance marketplaces has entered the mainstream.
