Mercer's study, Rethinking what we need from work, found that "employees are more focused on securing their financial, physical, and emotional health and well-being than by achievement and climbing the ladder."
Because of this, they are proposing firms shift to a lifestyle contract to attract and retain talent (click on the Mercer report chart below to enlarge).
The new contract suggests 6 areas employers should focus on if they want to win the war for talent:
- Step up efforts on retention
- Align to shifting workforce needs
- Focus on financial health
- Reimagine well-being at work
- Accelerate diversity, equity, and inclusion
- Build a more flexible future
When you look under the hood at most of these areas, Mercer suggests employers offer greater work flexibility, autonomy, and control.
These are, of course, key reasons workers choose to pursue independent work and freelancing.
We've long viewed the choice between having a traditional job and freelancing as a competition.
And most traditional jobs offer much less work flexibility, autonomy, and control than freelancing does. And we've long wondered why more firms don't provide at least some of the flexibility, autonomy, and control freelancing offers.
And perhaps, they will.
One of Mercer's focus areas, financial health, is where traditional employment has always had an advantage over independent work.
And because of this, it's a good area for employers to double down on in their competition with freelancing for talent (and their competition with other firms).
Before the pandemic, we were seeing a trend of employers offering more flexibility, greater work/life balance, higher pay, and better overall financial support.
However, there is much talk - especially in the tech industry - about cutting back on these changes. And if we have a recession, there will be more talk.
Our hope is that more companies will adopt some form of the lifestyle employee contract.
Either way, we think the appeal of freelancing and independent work will be sufficient for their numbers to continue to grow.