The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated a longer-term trend toward firms offering freelance-like flexibility and other benefits to at least some of their employees.
Two trends are the main drivers of this shift.
1. Workers are reevaluating what they want from work
The pandemic has caused people to rethink their jobs, personal interests, and how work fits into their larger life goals. And many want more work autonomy, control, and flexibility - attributes associated with freelancing and other forms of independent work.
Also, traditional jobs have lost one of their key selling points. Workers no longer see them as being as secure as they used to be.
This also is leading workers to prioritize work that fits their values and allows more control over how, where, and when they work - including the ability to work remotely - instead of focusing on job security.
And companies are responding.
A great example is Unilever's U-Work program, which the company describes as:
"U-Work gives employees the freedom and flexibility associated with contract roles with the security and benefits typically linked to permanent positions... People in U-Work don't have a fixed role. They work on varying assignments and, between assignments, are free to do other things that are important to them. "
While programs as extensive as U-Work are rare, many firms are increasingly incorporating some of these features to improve their employee value proposition and attract and retain talent.
2. Work is being taskified and projectized
While not a new trend, the taskification of work has been accelerated by the pandemic. The new book Work Without Jobs describes this as "deconstructing jobs into their component parts and reconstructs these components into more optimal combinations that reflect the skills and abilities of individual workers."
This taskification of jobs leads to greater workforce agility and flexibility, which is growing in importance due to the pace of change and competitive pressures.
Taskification also results in more project-based roles instead of the steady, regular, ongoing employee roles of the past. And these new project-based roles look a lot like freelancing.
Companies are even building internal employee gig marketplaces. The internal gig talent marketplace company Gloat describes these marketplaces as:
"... the internal talent marketplace is a two-sided platform that harnesses the power of AI to align employees (and their skills) to projects, gigs, mentorships, and full-time roles within their organization."
This is much like the descriptions provided by online freelance marketplaces like Fiverr, Upwork, and others to describe their services.
So, in essence, internal gig marketplaces turn traditional employees into employee freelancers - at least part of the time.
Over the past couple of decades, many traditional jobs took on some of the negatives associated with freelancing - they became less secure, with reduced benefits and less predictable schedules and income.
But labor shortages, coupled with the trends described above, are leading companies to increasingly provide traditional jobholders with the benefits of freelancing instead of just the negatives.
An important point to note is this shift mostly applies to knowledge workers, and especially those with specialized skills. So not everyone is seeing the benefits of this shift.
But one group that is especially benefitting is retirement age workers, who especially like the flexibility, autonomy and control - and extra income - freelancing provides.
For more on the advantages of freelancing for retirement age workers, see TopTal's Redefining Retirement: The Benefits of Freelancing After 60.