From Freelance to Fluid Workforces
Supporting freelancers is a positive move towards enabling fluid workforces

"The Great Resignation is far from over" reads the headline.

However, it's unlikely that it will ever be over - The reality is that era of employees staying in roles for long durations is over.

Right now in the UK, 23% of employees are eyeing their next role - and that's only set to increase, as the future of work is increasingly fluid - and employers need to embrace this desire and benefit of worker mobility.

Moving between roles, teams and organisations creates opportunities to learn, develop and more rapidly advance, and it allows employers to access a wider group of people and skills.

But you can't just 'go fluid'. Organisations need new mindsets and tools around managing, supporting and accessing a fluid workforce - to move away from talent acquisition and retention, and move towards relationship and network building over someone's entire career, not just when we 'own' them.

This requires organisations to embrace hybrid hires and freelancers, fluid roles, variable term engagements, internal mobility, network and alumni models, and designing for a fluid workforce is essential for the next generation of people and businesses.

It might feel like a huge shift, but there's a great place to start in building a more fluid workforce - working well with freelancers.

Building a business which works well for freelancers is building a business that works well with fluid talent. It has all of the same needs, challenges and opportunities.

Working well with freelancers requires you to set clear intentions for your workforce model, proactively build and continually nurture a network of talent, leverage tools which allow you to find the right people for the right projects and cast teams more effectively, it requires visibility of projects and opportunites rather than gatekeeping, it demands reducing the back and forth to engage and onboard, it demands effortless, fair and transparent payment, it requires a system which engages and supports your talent over their entire career not just when you're working with them, and recognises and rewards involvement in projects, it expects investment in L&D for the network, and actively designs for diversity. 

Building a system which supports freelancers can then easily be applied to your internal teams too - who is the right person for the role, how do we onboard and engage them for a short term project, how do we ensure they are enabled to do good work, find the support they need, and want to continue working with us?

Fluid and Freelance are not the same - but aiming to support your people to work well, regardless of their employment model, is a step in the right direction to being able to continue working with the people you want.

Leapers works with businesses who want to become more Freelance Friendly. Get in touch if you're interested to see how we can support your organisation.