The Gig economy: It is a general workforce management system, in which independent workers, flexible jobs and short-term engagements (as opposed to full-time employment) are commonplace. It is also called as a Freelance Economy, Independent Workforce, or Sharing Economy. The gig economy offers flexibility with regard to employment hours. It differs from traditional employment system of full-time workers who rarely change jobs and believes in lifetime job and career. In the gig economy, the gig (an individual task, job or assignment) is a small portion of a gig worker’s income. According to surveys, the number of freelancers is increasing year by year. Small businesses claim that people can benefit from flexible hours. This flexible nature often offers small businesses to pay when they have work to be done and there will be no incurrence of staff costs when the demand is not there.
How the gig economy works: The gig economy operates on freelance marketplaces that are aimed to connect freelancers looking for freelance jobs with the companies which have short term jobs to be done. Building a business is a challenging task especially when we have a limited budget and a small team. And many times stat ups have to embrace growth initiatives because they just don’t have enough time, money and of course manpower to do it all. This is where the gig economy comes into place which benefits the startups to grow their business and achieve their goals.
In the gig economy, specialized professionals such as network engineers, data technicians, website developers, telecom engineers service, offer their services to the businesses at an affordable price.
Gig economy minimizes the administrative cost and saves the time that we need to invest to hire the employees. These are the reasons why small businesses focusing mainly on freelance marketplaces which serves the specialized skilled professionals that we cannot get locally.
How gig economy helps to small businesses to succeed?
For small businesses, it is difficult to reach same level of success as the larger corporations in the market. Gig economy platforms or freelance marketplaces are creating a new class of opportunities that helps small businesses to become successful.
Flexibility
Hiring a freelancer is a good alternative because you will always have enough amount of manpower. Whether it is a startup or large scale business you will have the exact manpower you need. Moreover, freelancers do not need to work on set hours. For example, you could hire a data center technician to work on your servers back up process over the weekend even when the business is closed.
Find Top Experts
Generally, no one contains all the skill set that is needed to get the task done. Hiring freelancers though gig economy, positions you in a situation where you can have a top professional for each and every task.
For instance, you could hire a highly skilled finance accountant to handle your financials, a web developer to manage your website, a network engineer to look after your network and system related issues.
The cost factor
Cost is one of the principal factors while choosing a freelancer. Many marketplaces display their freelancers’ fee for various jobs. This allows businesses to whittle down candidates based on their budget. Many websites let you filter the search results based on hourly rate, skills, and previous projects feedback.
Once you find a freelancer who is the right fit for the project, the next step is to outline a schedule with the deliverables and a deadline. This helps keep both sides on the same page and sync with the project goals.
In the end, there is no right or wrong way to grow your small business. Whether it is investing in a new idea or building out a great team, the possibilities for the progress are huge. But, the rapidly increasing gig economy is poised to leave its mark on the future of small business development.
