Christina Brun Petersen co-founded Worksome in 2016. Today she leads the flexible revolution as Worksome’s Chief People Officer.
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The freelance workforce is set to grow even more in 2023 with the majority of laid-off workers fed up with full-time permanent jobs. In fact, it was recently reported that nine in 10 workers who were recently laid off would like to have more control and flexibility over their work schedule than traditional full-time employment offers.
This, coupled with the fact that four in five business leaders plan to turn to the contingent workforce this year to be more agile as a business and fill in-demand skill sets, means that external workers are likely to become a larger part of your workforce.
How Can People Ops And HR Teams Prepare?
People ops can consider these three things as they prepare to better leverage the external workforce.
Easier Access To External Talent
The most progressive People ops teams are investing in technology and taking a data-driven approach to talent to ride out the economic downturn and future-proof their businesses—by centralizing freelancers, contractors and recruiters into one global database.
By having a curated talent pool of external workers, hiring managers can maintain agility in their teams while benefiting from faster hiring time and reducing overall recruitment costs. And overall, you can improve your company's access to the most in-demand skills and workers without sacrificing efficiency.
A New Focus On Freelancer Experience
With more businesses leveraging the external workforce this year, the competition for top external talent comes with the territory.
Ensuring these workers want to work with you again in the future is paramount, as it correlates to faster time to hire, faster time to delivery and ultimately more productivity. To achieve and maintain good relationships with freelance talent, people ops and HR can focus on creating a best-in-class experience for external workers, including:
• A smooth hiring process: Ensure a seamless and fast hiring and onboarding process
• Clear communication: Set clear expectations, provide a thorough brief, discuss what information they need access to and how they will fit into the team
• Pay on time and correctly. Every time.
Improved Compliance Standards
With governments across the U.S. and E.M.E.A. introducing tighter regulations on workers' classification, it’s imperative you’re meeting compliance standards across the business to avoid the risk of hefty fines and penalties and unhappy freelancers.
If you’re unsure where to start, ask yourself these three questions:
• Do you have a process in place to avoid risk and penalties for misclassifications?
• Is the process fast?
• Do your hiring managers always use the process?
If you answered no to any of the questions, it’s worth reevaluating your current process and investing in a tool to take on the risk without compromising time to hire. This can help ensure your hiring managers don’t skirt around the process.
Creating A Strong External Workforce Layer
To stay competitive this year, companies need to create strategies for growing their external layer of workers. People ops should start preparing by creating better experiences for both their employees and freelancers.
Hiring and resourcing teams will likely be aiming to facilitate a centralized network to find top talent and fill skill gaps quickly with innovative processes that are fully compliant and don’t impact time to hire.
For freelancers, it’s about a great first impression via smooth hiring and onboarding, consistent and clear communication from day one, and on-time and correct payments.
By getting these fundamentals in place, companies can be successful in building a strong external talent layer for their business in 2023.
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