Today’s workforce features increasingly flexible work situations. The landscape continues to change due to the increase in hiring of contingent workers, freelancers, contractors, and several other types of “gig” workers.

As millennials grow into management roles and Gen Z starts moving into the workforce, an entire new thought process regarding work will begin to emerge. The option to be a gig worker within the human cloud ecosystem will become more appealing, as it will allow these groups to greater balance their work/life priorities.

As a result of this transition, both employers and workers are attempting to establish a new corporate culture and redefine the social and legal obligations between both parties. For the employer, questions regarding compliance, labor employment laws and regulations all come into question versus the inherent efficiency gains anticipated.

What’s needed is a way to onboard work and workers so as to enable organizations to be more efficient and secure when engaging the Human-Talent Cloud.

The “Gig” Trend According to Pew Research, one in four Americans now earn money from the digital “platform economy.”  Within this digital platform, lives the “Gig Economy,” which simply put is people being hired for short-term contracts or working freelance. Last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 55 million people in the U.S. are “gig workers,” which is more than 35% of the U.S. workforce. The gig work number is projected to increase to 43% by 2020.

Global Gig Economy Revenue by Component

• Independent Contractors $2,039B
• Direct Temporary Workers $611B
• SOW $458B
• Agency Temps $413B

Some of the obvious reasons why the gig economy continues to grow are that gig workers feel less stressed because of the flexibility with their schedules and organizations employing remote workers benefit from access to a much larger talent pool, combined with the monetary benefits including cost-savings on real estate and a reduced environmental footprint. European remote workers comprise almost 14 percent of the workforce, and approximately 65 percent would be interested in remote work versus on site employment.

The Human-Talent Cloud The Human-Talent Cloud is defined as a group of companies which are two-sided online labor market places. Thousands to millions of hirers and thousands to millions of workers are aggregated on websites or mobile apps, which consists of the tools to match/connect these two sides. This includes everything from sourcing to management to payment.

Common tools powering the human cloud:

• Online staffing platforms
• Cloud labor platforms
• Crowdsourcing platforms
• Online work arrangement intermediation platforms
• Talent exchanges
• Online work services
• Mobile job board apps

Why Use The Human-Talent Cloud?

Today’s new world of work is witnessing demand that is dramatically outstripping supply. Unemployment is at a comfortable 4.7 percent rate. Specific professional sectors, including finance, tech, legal and accounting are much lower and for certain IT roles the unemployment rates are less than one percent. Speed-to-hire is critical to fill today’s workforce gaps. The trend is continuing to shift labor from local to global, which creates flexible, distributed/ virtual teams. The benefits are plentiful, including finding unique skills quickly and expanding an organization’s demographics. The Human-Talent Cloud eliminates time and money wasted on traditional employment processes by allowing organizations to acquire skills on-demand.

Uber, TaskRabbit and other gig-based organizations are the result of the trend towards a fast-paced, task-oriented, businesses that are platform-based, which are paving the way for this flexible work revolution.

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