About a year ago the term started to spring up to describe the rise in a new type of self-employment in which skilled workers would no longer be tethered to a single company over an extended period of time. In the gig economy, workers would be able to apply their specified skill set (developing code or optimising search marketing, for instance) to specific projects for a number of different companies. Organisations benefit from the flexibility of the model: staffing-up or downsizing quickly as business needs dictate. Gig workers also benefit from the flexibility, allowing them to grow evolve their subject matter expertise \u2013 staying in-tune with market demand over time. Some call it the \u201cUberization\u201d of business: an open marketplace of talent and organisational need.<\/p>\n
The concept has come under fire recently, as opponents say that gig-economy allows companies to bid-down wages, or get around paying benefits for contractors. But the trend continues to grow in the UK. In fact, at 4.8 million, there are nearly as many people who are self-employed in the UK as work in the public sector (5.4 million). But whereas public sector employment has been declining for the better part of a decade, the number of self-employed Brits has been steadily increasing since 2000. When you drill down into the types of jobs that make up the gig economy, you\u2019ll see that an increased percentage of self-employed folks are \u201cknowledge workers,\u201d representing scientific, technical and financial professions. In fact, these roles now account for nearly 20% of self-employed jobs in 2016, up from 16% in 2008.<\/p>\n
Although the underlying causes for the increase in the gig economy might be difficult to pinpoint, what keeps it growing among knowledge workers is access to productivity solutions in the cloud. Nowhere is this more critical than in marketing. Being able to stay engaged with your customers amidst constantly changing platforms and increasing expectations requires a special kind of organisational flexibility. This means being able to connect, communicate and collaborate with your colleagues whether they\u2019re sitting right next to you or halfway around the world.<\/p>\n
Fortunately for marketers, you should have the resources you need to leverage the gig economy while staying on top of customer engagement. Marketing budgets were up globally 10% in 2015 and are expected to hit a record $1 Trillion by 2017. In the UK, specifically, advertising budgets are expected to continue to grow, with digital areas such as internet and mobile advertising leading the way with 12.3% and 39.3% growth, respectively. With this kind of investment in marketing, companies should be able to find the right talent and empower them to be productive with tools that are familiar and simple to use.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s more than just a set of tools. The right productivity solution allows you to connect with all your workers in a number of ways. As gig economy workers move in and out of projects, interacting with internal and remote employees, the right productivity solution will allow you to have real-time conversations, anytime, anywhere. It also enables remote workers to collaborate on content creation in real-time on any device while, as an organisation, retaining control of who has access to documents and files. The right productivity solution connects all the disparate tools for collaboration and communication at scale, and leverages the data from these tools to gain insight into individual and team productivity.<\/p>\n