Can’t imagine yourself freelancing? You’re not alone. Many people never picture themselves doing independent work, preferring the rhythms—and steady paycheck—of a traditional job.
But if you don’t know how you’d even begin freelancing or find contract work if your job dries up, you’re missing what could be the most vital career survival skill in the economy of the future—no matter how talented you are. As more big employers increase their reliance on free agents, freelancing may be your best option at certain points in your career—if you’re willing and able to jump into it.
MBO Partners’ annual predictions for the future of work point out how important freelancing will be to those who want to stay continually employed—either by choice or because they need to earn money. The firm in Herndon, Va., which provides back office support to independent workers and studies the freelance economy, is now predicting that nearly six in 10 Americans will do independent work at some point in the next decade, based on seven consecutive years of research. Currently, four in 10 workers say they currently do independent work or have done so in the past, according to MBO Partners.
Freelancing probably won't be a long-term career choice for all of them. MBO Partners is predicting that freelancing will become an “episodic destination,” meaning that people will cycle between freelancing and traditional jobs, depending on their current needs and opportunities. As the idea of traditional retirement fades, many older workers will pursue “passion projects” well into their eighties and beyond, the company predicts.
In this evolving landscape, many people who freelance won’t see it as their “core identity, says Gene Zaino, CEO of MBO Partners. It will be what they do from time to time, he says.
“It’s going to be a normal process for people to be doing freelancing and independent contracting throughout their career for various reasons,” he says.
The change reflects a transition to more of a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately economy. Employers are moving away from prizing team members who spend the longest hours at their desk and instead looking for workers who can hit particular goals. Sometimes, it is becoming clear that they don't need someone to work on payroll year-round to achieve those benchmarks, when it is possible to hire an expert on a short-term, project basis instead.
“Companies and people are going to be buying results,” says Zaino. This trend is already taking shape, with more companies creating statements of work outlining the fixed results they want, he says.
At the same time, employers will be looking for ways to use automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to get results, which could displace some workers and help others augment what they can accomplish. “Shrewd independents will take advantage of these developments rather than resist them,” noted MBO Partners in its predictions.
“People who are very innovative and skill-focused will be using AI to help them be more productive and deliver more value,” says Zaino.
However, some lower-skilled independent workers doing task-based work such as driving for ride-sharing services won’t be able to put up much of a defense unless they are willing and able to invest time in career development. “There will be a real need for people to learn new skills,” says Zaino.
Many people whose current source of work is at risk haven’t started taking action, which will heighten disparities between people who have found ways to keep their skills relevant and those who struggle to find a place in the changing economy. As Rebecca Henderson, CEO of Randstad Sourceright, a provider of talent management and acquisition solutions, put it when we spoke a few months ago, “The less skilled workers aren’t necessarily prepared to take on the jobs created as a result of AI and other automation tools. Clearly, there will be folks who are unemployed as a result.”
Of course, even for the most resilient and highly skilled freelancers, the challenging parts of freelancing for most independent workers—fluctuating work, uneven cash flow, the high cost of healthcare and lack of access to safety net programs like unemployment—remain to be solved. At the moment, most of us are on our own in trying to live with them. Zaino believes that over the next five years or so, we’ll see more tools and policy changes that make it easier for self-directed workers to navigate these challenges.
“There are going to be services that will support the people who want to work this way,” says Zaino. “If someone doesn’t really know how to market themselves or is concerned about their pipeline of projects there will be services that will feed them the work. There will be services that help people with career guidance, sharpening their different skills and competencies.”
MBO Partners also believes companies will court freelancers more energetically so they can become a “client of choice,” for the independent workforce.
“There will always be full-time employees and core institutional teams with knowledge about a brand, but there is going to be a large part of the workforce that will be drifting around,” says Zaino.
There’s lots of evidence that more companies are treating their freelancers as a valuable asset. A few months back, I spoke Rob Brimm, president of SAP Fieldglass, whose Live Insights product lets employers benchmark, plan, predict and simulate scenarios for how they will use their “external talent”—meaning freelancers, contractors and other contingent workers— in real time. It can help employers track the type of work individual free agents have done within a company to keep them in the firm’s talent pools. It can also help employers answer questions like, “Is there an inventory of people who may be on assignments that may be wrapping up?” he says.
“Those are the types of scenarios we support so you are capturing high-value individuals and really cutting down on the time it takes to find them,” he says. “They’ve been socialized and acculturated. Why not re-use someone?”
As attracting great freelancers becomes more of a competitive advantage, companies’ use of tools like this one could prove helpful to free agents, whose flow of work often depends on relationships with particular clients within a firm and can dry up if those crucial contacts leave. Once the company knows which freelancers have successfully been serving one business unit, it seems likely that they may share this information with other business units that need help, too—meaning freelancers could have access to a wider pool of work and stay connected to the company for a longer period of time.
Ultimately, as companies rely more on outside talent, they’ll need to ensure that their bonds with independent talent aren’t too loose. Running an agile company only works if the right people are available to tackle the jobs that robots and software programs can’t do. As more big companies come to understand this, the better off freelancers who can deliver results will be.
