You have probably heard about the rise of the independent worker and the impact of this trend on business practices. But your team is still all traditional employees, so this shift doesn’t affect you, does it? Maybe more than you think, argues SAP’s Julien Vayssiere. Read more »
Call it the gig economy, Generation Flux or Freelance Nation, but whatever you term the rise in independent workers, the trend is reshaping management. How can you ensure that the contingent workers on your team feel as engaged and appreciated as the long-term employees? Read more »
Coworking, originally a movement dominated by freelancers and entrepreneurs, is increasingly attracting more and more remote corporate employees. Do their expectations line up with other members? Do they get as much out of the coworking experience? A new survey aimed to find out. Read more »
New research from independent work consultancy MBO Partners out today reveals that while people across the generations are interested in breaking out of the corporate grind and going solo, Baby Boomers are the most satisfied working independently. Read more »
A long-time, female freelancer argues that, though the reason may be nurture rather than nature, women are often better equipped with the skills demanded of independent workers, including empathy, creativity and the ability to accept an uncertain, lower-status work style. Read more »
Gary Swart, CEO of freelancer sourcing site oDesk took the stage at Net:Work 2011 to talk about how work is changing in the face of remote work trends. He started by pointing to a key competitive determinator all companies seek and must compete for: talent. Read more »
Corporate America earns praise for being efficient, creating economies of scale and bringing the wide world’s goods and services right to the doorstep of consumers. Among the things traditional big business isn’t so good at – authenticity. Working independently is a whole other story. Read more »
Think of independent workers, and you’ll probably imagine a lone professional staring at his laptop all day, supporting himself in his slippers. But there are some freelancers who build their solo gigs into thriving, and lucrative, businesses, employing others. Here’s how they manage it. Read more »
No segment of the economy looks exactly buoyant right now, and small business hiring is no exception, but what does that have to do with the future of work? Plenty, suggest new reports showing that tepid hiring, is partially down to rise of freelancers. Read more »
When it comes to piecing together a career as an independent worker, online marketplaces like Elance and oDesk can seem like all upside. But is this the whole story? A small business consultant suggests these sites present an often overlooked problem for freelancers – lower prices. Read more »
Are “untemplaters” — contract web workers unfettering themselves from the conventional freelance model — a good skill resource for businesses? To many employers this breed of digital professional might seem flighty and unreliable. Where’s the accountability? Can a project as important as yours rest on their contribution? Read more »
Side projects can be businesses or just-for-fun efforts that we do in our nonworking hours. While there are some risks with taking side projects, I strongly believe that most of the time they benefit both the individual and the employer. Read more »
Working with freelancers has become a necessity for many businesses. But bringing someone into your team who doesn’t have a good idea of how your organization operates can present difficulties. You can make things easier by asking the right questions before you start your working relationship: Read more »
In the corporate world, it’s easy to track positive mobility in your career. You could get a promotion (a move upward to a position of higher rank or pay), or laterally to a position of similar rank, but with different tasks or projects. Advancement in a […] Read more »
We’ve looked at freelance outsourcing and crowdsourcing sites in the past – places like 99 Designs for graphics work or Elance for programming and other fields. Generally speaking, it seems that most web workers in our audience view these sites as a threat, encouraging rate cutting […] Read more »
