This past week, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced they will return to the office the way they were before Covid. In Jassy’s words, the change is “to address the second issue of being better set up to invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other and our culture to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business.”
While most of the conversation and responses have centered around “where” people will work, I challenge Jassy and you to ask yourself “who” will drive the work? Will it be full-time employees? Agencies? Contractors? The data is clear that the future workforce is choosing self-employment and freelancing. According to a Fiverr study of 10,033 Gen Zers from around the world, 70% are currently freelancing or plan to in the future, and 53% of Gen Zers work full-time hours on freelance projects.
Meanwhile, 45% of US millennials freelance. But just like the hybrid flavors of remote work and the office, freelance or full-time is not a binary decision. There will always be full-time employees. But increasingly the lines are blurring in how top talent works. Rather than full-time or unemployed, top talent is choosing the fluidity and flexibility of self-employment, with 47% choosing to work on freelance platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, MBO Partners, and the 800 to 1,000 global platforms that increasingly specialize in skill sets, industries, and regions.
Where does this leave you and other leading enterprises?
Freelance Is A Winning Talent and Growth Strategy
In my last article in this series, I covered how startups are using freelance networks to access new regions, scale with agility, flexibility, and cost control, and access high-quality expertise. Once reserved for top brands, high-volume consultancies, and international corporations, freelance options are available for enterprises of all sizes and are quickly becoming a key differentiator between successful and faltering businesses.
In this article, I’ll focus on large enterprises and how they are already benefiting from the speed, secure scalability, and access to abundant freelance talent pools to unlock growth, efficiency, and innovation.
As early as 2019, NASA said, “There is no doubt that the gig economy is here and having an enormous impact on the workforce. It would be hard to write about the Future of Work and not consider the role and disruptive nature that the gig economy is having on NASA.”
Their words have been followed up with action. Since 2011, NASA has launched 300 projects across 32 platforms, enabling access to up to 120 million freelancers. The success is outstanding, as the skills of freelancers have met or exceeded expectations in 92% of projects, cost savings averaged 80%, and the procurement process went from 9–12 months to 3–4 weeks. According to John Vickers, NASA’s Principal Technologist, “The final designs [of solutions developed through NTL] are amazing. They are far beyond our current state of knowledge and will greatly impact our lunar and Mars mission architecture for manufacturing and construction.”
It’s not just NASA. According to Harvard Business Review’s report Building The On Demand Workforce, “almost 90% of business leaders believed that the talent platforms would be somewhat or very important to their organization’s future competitive advantage.” A 2022 joint study by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte reported that 86% of global business leaders said the effective management of external contributors was critical to their organization’s overall performance and that 33% of work is being performed by external workers.
Yet broadscale enterprise adoption is still early in its infancy, and action hasn’t matched interest. As Jon Younger said, “The growth of freelancing is just as good a bet as Elon Musk, but you wouldn’t know it from the behavior of big corporates. At least, not yet.”
I aim to help bridge the gap from interest to action by showing how leading enterprises think about freelance work.
As part of the research, I spoke with over 30 company executives this past quarter, from Omaha Steaks to Microsoft to Airbus to fast-growing startups. Admittedly, most large enterprises were open to sharing their results and perspectives, but fewer than 10% were available for a public quote. In the last section, I’ll include these sentiments from both those quoted and those I spoke with but did not quote.
What Enterprise Executives Are Saying
Nate Rempe, President and CEO, Omaha Steaks: “Emerging technologies and shifts to a ‘gig economy’ mean employers must hire more deliberately. Companies like Omaha Steaks, which create appealing employment opportunities with high rates of team success, will have a leg up over those who don’t invest in onboarding and training. Each year we add thousands of seasonal team members to help with our popular holiday gifting business. We train and empower them to make necessary decisions to ensure all customers are satisfied.”
Amber Roth, VP, SAP Fieldglass: “Many organizations are increasingly recognizing the strategic value of integrating independent workers and freelancers into their talent strategies. However, many companies are cautious about increasing their use of ICs due to compliance and audit risks. With government audits on the rise, driven by concerns over missing tax revenue, effective tracking and management of ICs are more critical than ever. When we look at market size, independent contractors (ICs) are the largest segment of external worker spend. This trend gained momentum during the pandemic and continues as more individuals seek the flexibility and meaningful work that IC status offers. We are seeing heavy use of ICs in sectors such as healthcare (physicians and staffing), IT (specialized skill sets), and consulting. Other areas include engineering/design work, editors, and videographers, highlighting the diverse applications and critical roles ICs play across various industries. I expect this to continue to increase.”
Vinod Kartha, Corporate Leader, Enterprise, Expert Insights, IT, UST: “Finding niche talent used to be both time-consuming and expensive. Leveraging open talent for internal projects has helped us shrink project timelines by up to 50%, as well as reduce project costs by up to 60-70%. This is possible when projects are broken into smaller chunks, which can then be distributed between internal teams and the freelancer(s). Furthermore, with our pre-built talent clouds, we have instant access to always in-demand talent, enabling us to rapidly respond to project ramp-ups and ramp-downs. We bring this delivery model to our clients as well so that they have access to a flexible on-demand and highly skilled workforce, without the complexity associated with managing that infrastructure. It’s a pay-per-use model, that works for our customers, UST, and the talent.”
Mina Bastawros, Head of Creative and Digital Marketing, Airbus: “Freelance presents a valuable opportunity for companies like Airbus to enhance project success and foster innovation. By engaging with diverse talent, both internal and external, organizations gain access to a wider range of ideas and expertise. This allows for the exploration of new ideas and the assessment of their feasibility before committing to full-scale programmes. Collaborating with freelancers brings fresh perspectives and challenges conventional approaches. This fosters a dynamic environment where out-of-the-box thinking thrives, pushing teams to consider alternative solutions and accelerate the development process.”
Nuri Demirci Lopez, Microsoft: “Organizations that embrace flexible talent strategies and digital work models are unlocking unparalleled value by tapping into a global pool of specialized expertise. These models enable companies to scale operations efficiently, innovate faster, and remain agile in the face of market shifts. By leveraging freelance talent, businesses like mine, can dynamically align resources with their strategic objectives, driving an order of magnitude in productivity and growth. The future of work is not confined by traditional employment and AI; it’s being redefined by the flexibility, resilience, and innovation that the freelance economy brings.”
Executives Understand Where The Workforce Is Going And How To Build The Freelance Business Case
The freelance economy is no longer a post-pandemic fad. Whether the quotes above or the enterprises not mentioned, a couple of patterns keep emerging.
The first is a general acknowledgment that the workforce is changing, and individuals are choosing to freelance. It reminds me of when I started working at Microsoft in 2018, and executives were worried about missing out on the millennial generation. All tech companies did things like show off tree houses and offer lavish benefits – all in the name of not missing out on the next generation. With today’s demographic expectations, it’s not only fear of missing out on Gen Z, it’s fear of missing out on the future way of working: self-employment. Omaha Steaks understands this and is actively investing in onboarding and training for their freelance population. Likewise, Unilever launched an Open2U Talent Community, Salesforce uses a Culture in a Box Process that onboards both employees and freelancers together, and J&J has a freelancer portal on their careers page, along with “sponsors” who have a supervisory relationship with freelancers.
Second, the benefits are material, transformational, and well-understood. UST reported that a freelance model reduced their project timelines by up to 50% and reduced their costs by up to 60–70%. NASA reported cost savings averaging 80%, and their procurement process went from 9–12 months to 3–4 weeks. Industry standards are 2–5 days to find the right person. And as enterprises build their own talent pools, this speed can be reduced to minutes.
Third is that enterprise leaders are looking at freelance as an enabler and accelerant of innovation. Freelance brings an abundance of diversity and creativity. It even reduces risk. As Mina from Airbus pointed out, freelancers unlock “the exploration of new ideas and the assessment of their feasibility before committing to full-scale programmes”.
Executives Also Understand The Challenges, Risk, and Work Required
Like any digital transformation, embracing a new workforce comes with plenty of risks, and requires significant upfront work to design, pilot, and eventually build freelance into a compliant and scalable workforce.
Vinod Kartha mentions a portion of the upfront work when he mentioned “breaking projects into smaller chunks,” as well as “pre-building talent clouds.”
There’s also the increasing risk from classification and compliance. Amber Roth of SAP Fieldglass mentioned that “many companies are cautious about increasing their use of ICs due to compliance and audit risks”. This is a consistent concern across all executive enterprise teams, which is why the “freelance management system” segment of the freelance economy is a rapidly growing segment with leaders like myBasePay and Mellow as innovative solutions combining the existing contingent talent solutions of indemnification, classification, and EOR capabilities for a freelance workforce. It’s also why talent platforms are either acquiring or building their own enterprise offerings. For example, Upwork Enterprise, Fiverr Enterprise—which includes the acquisition of Stoke Talent in 2021—and European leader Malt acquiring enterprise-focused consulting platform Comatch in 2022.
Where Should You Start?
For all enterprise leaders: Remember, it’s still early. You’re not first, and you’re certainly not last. However, the window is quickly closing to make a freelance strategy your competitive advantage. If you do nothing, it’s not like the computational cloud, where you can adopt a cloud strategy that everyone has. Instead, the human cloud is finite; once talent is working for your competitors, they’ll be too busy to work with you.
So, what can you do today? I’ll give you four quick pieces of advice, then give you a big win that all leadership teams can relate to and can use to justify investing strategically.
First, look for painful problems. It’s easy to show someone a cheap logo or general research. But painful problems give you the ability to show transformative benefits that touch the core business. They can also have a lower failure risk if the existing channels already aren’t performing. For example, where are the tens, or hundreds of open req’s? Or where are the delayed, or never started projects?
Second, be intentional about freelance talent platforms as a strategic investment. It’s not enough to treat them like every other vendor. Success requires top-down buy-in, investment, and room to design, learn, and improve.
Third, look to talent platforms as strategic partners. So long as you choose the right platform, most likely they have solved the exact sourcing, onboarding, security, and compliance concerns you’re worried about. Don’t believe me? Search your specific skill set, region, or industry amongst the 380 global platforms in Human Cloud’s Industry Landscape.
Fourth, share the success of your peers. One of my favorite examples is Akhil Seth of UST. UST is a leading transformation consultancy. UST was months behind a client-facing website build because they couldn’t find an expert with both advanced geometry and a very specific library in the Java framework. Yet because they understood the fractionalization potential of a freelance network, they knew they could engage multiple freelancers for each skill set rather than needing a one-size-fits-all unicorn. Through their freelance network, they found two experts, one with advanced geometry skills, and one that taught the existing developers how to use the Java library. The result is that they completed the website in 3 weeks, and saved around $2 million in revenue. That’s a story that sticks, and that your leadership can relate to.
Now it’s your turn. Are you ready to build your future workforce?