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Trends in freelancing

The New Trend: A Blend of Traditional and Freelance Workforce

Written by: Flexing It 15/07/2022 4 minutes read
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“One thing everyone is fairly confident of is that roles in the future will be different. We are going to have a blended workforce” - Paul Surridge, Leadership Consulting Partner, UK (Wharton 2020)

Blended workforces are a topic that keeps coming up lately. There's a justification for that; COVID-19 has led to a rise in the number of us beginning remote work. More people are working as freelancers, as expectations change more rapidly than ever, and teams are flexing to meet new challenges. 

To say that adapting to a blended workforce is only attracting new talent and satisfying the demand for different employment opportunities would be a misconstruing statement- employers by and large can leverage the features of a blended workforce in order to function beyond their regular scope of activities. A couple of more auxiliaries that accompany a blended workforce are innovation, reduced cost of hiring new talent, and flexibility, of course. Forbes has shared a complete guide on how to get started on a blended business model and a case study of a firm that adopted the new blended workforce model.

Without having to fill every position with a full-time employee, you may now put together a skill mix that works for your business. The ability to mix and match is this system's greatest asset, but it also has other benefits to offer:

  1. A flexible and agile workforce: Utilizing the adaptability of non-permanent talent, organizations can respond to unforeseen demands. Not only this, their business will boost employee engagement and welfare by allowing employees to continue working while maintaining a positive work-life balance. The flexibility required to draw high-performing applicants for a project while preserving some amount of stability and consistency can be created by creating a workplace that values a blended workforce. On-demand employment platforms cannot cover every sort of job, hence in these circumstances, it's critical to employ the new employment model.
  2. Lower Costs: Regular job privileges like health insurance, bonuses, paid time off, and other benefits are not often provided to gig workers. Without absorbing the annual costs of full-time employees, organizations can budget for the salaries of contingent workers. The cost of hiring and keeping employees is high. There is no avoiding it- a blended workforce can be a way around this problem. With a blended workforce, a company's payroll fluctuates based only on the amount of work they need to get done.
  3. Innovation: Due to their wide range of work experiences, freelancers and contractors present potential for innovation. Companies can solve problems in unique and creative ways by embracing the more diversified nature of a blended workforce.

The blended workforce is by no means a new concept, but as alternative staffing solutions develop, it is turning into a far more useful tool for businesses that require flexible workers. According to a HBR research, a blended workforce may be key to lasting competitive advantage.

For a very long time, an office only had full-time workers. It was considered to be the only course of action. The ethos of blended workforces, however, is fundamentally different. The concept of full-time employment is retained, but various schedules are also taken into consideration. The essence is that it entails having a core group of full-time staff who must handle routine office tasks and hiring a ring of temporary gig workers to support them.

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