Are you prepared for the rise of the skilled independent worker?
Skilled independent workers (commonly called ‘freelancers’) form a subsection of the self-employed population working in the top three highest skilled occupational categories. They are increasingly moving into self-employment in the second half of their careers, and include senior managers, top leaders, academics, and professionals (eg lawyers, accountants, creatives, doctors and scientists).
Predictions for the global workforce
Around the world, more and more skilled professionals are choosing to leave employed work and to become self-employed, often working as external contractors or consultants. Indeed, some forecasts suggest that independent workers will comprise 35-40% of the global workforce by 2025.
We nearly hired a librarian on Fiverr
I am currently working on an academic scoping review with a small group of colleagues across the world. I initiated it and feel responsible for it, and we were rather overwhelmed when our search results came back with over 5,500 papers to be screened!
We are now at the final full text review stage for the last 14 papers – but at one time we were planning to ‘hire’ an academic librarian to help us, enabled by Fiverr, one of the many specialised talent ‘hire’ platforms collectively offering access to over half a billion highly skilled professionals worldwide.
My fascination with ‘career epidemiology’
I’m fascinated by the world of work and what I refer to as ‘career epidemiology’. I like to use my public health skills to spot the trends and changes in the landscape that are transforming not only the corporate work environment but likely to impact health care and public health services. I’ve written many blogs over the years, including ‘the robot will see you now’, ‘are you prepared for a hundred year life?’, and ‘the future of work is already here’.
I wrote my own job description
I’ve been working independently for nearly a decade, and remember the day when I wrote my own job description. While it was scary at the time, I am privileged to be able to choose to ‘do the work that only I can do’, in order to be of service to medical and public health leaders through providing evidence-based coaching psychology.
You can create a new later-career chapter too!
In the ten years I’ve been working as an independent leadership coach for doctors and public health leaders, I’ve seen a rise in the numbers clients who are late-career and wanting to continue to grow their own expertise and create their own job descriptions. Rather than retiring, these senior doctors and public health leaders have been working with me to create a whole new professional chapter for themselves, in order to do their own best work and on their own terms.
If you’re a manager or a leader, it’s time to prepare
A recent HBR article on the topic of skilled independent workers quoted “Freelancers tend to jump from one project to another. That’s essentially what we’re paying for—their accumulated experiences and the fresh external perspectives they bring.”.
I think this is interesting because it’s not about bringing in additional surge capacity for transactional work, but rather using freelancers for their disruptive, creative thinking and their advanced skills mastery.
Integrating a constantly changing internal and external workforce
According to the same article, managers will spend less time managing internal staff teams and more time as project and contract managers in order to source and hire the additional capacity and expertise needed to deliver their services.
Managers and leaders will also need to ensure that they keep their internal workforce happy and provide values congruent, psychologically safe working environments without the luxury of stable, bounded teams.
The question is: whether you want to hire freelancers – or to be one?
I believe that the future workplace – including in the context of health – will include a core internal workforce co-existing with a wider workforce of temporary contract or outsourced workers performing transactional functions, plus independent freelancers with significant autonomy over what, when and how they work.
Freelancers’ roles will be to bring their advanced, cutting-edge professional skills to the workplace. The question is – do you want to engage their services, or to be a freelancer yourself?
Sources
Gherson & Gratton ‘Highly Skilled Professionals Want Your Work But Not Your Job’ Harvard Business Review Magazine, May-June 2024
IPSE Self-Employed Landscape Report 2023
Dr Fiona Day is the world’s only Leadership Coach with advanced coaching psychology, medical and public health qualifications (MBChB, FFPH, BPS Chartered Psychologist in Coaching Psychology, EMCC Master Practitioner Coach & Mentor) and is in a unique position to help you and your teams to flourish. Fiona specialises in coaching medical and public health leaders, is a coach Supervisor, and an EQA Foundation Award Holder. Get 3 hours of FREE CPD with Fiona’s Health Career Success Programme here. Book a free confidential 30 minute Consultation with Fiona here.
