At one time only musicians looked to get a ‘gig’. The rest of us found ‘proper jobs’ that paid a fixed monthly salary with holidays and let us plan for the future with some legal rights.<\/p>\n
Today more of us have left this traditional job model to try to make a living working for ourselves on one-off ‘gigs’ \u2013as temporary workers, independent contractors or people selling their skills through websites. The ‘gig economy’ has firmly entered employment vocabulary, becoming a catch-all term for anything from Uber taxi drivers and Airbnb hosts to freelance professionals.<\/p>\n
It is a relatively small but growing workforce. Following the financial crash of 2008 the proportion of people working for themselves has grown from 12% to 16% and could soon overtake numbers in the public sector. And this is the issue in the UK: employment rights were created within a framework of traditional employment methods where only employees with two years\u2019 continuous service have a right not to be unfairly dismissed. Those working short-term gigs may never work somewhere long enough.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s employment laws do not sit easily alongside the expansion of the gig economy and ‘portfolio working’ \u2013 where people work on a number of different projects for different organisations, sometimes combined with being a traditional employee. Depending on whether they are an employee or a worker they will have different rights, and the distinction is not always clear cut.<\/p>\n
On the frontline of the legal challenge is Uber. Facing employment rights claims in the UK from drivers, backed by the GMB, it has already settled 385,000 similar claims in California and Massachusetts for around $100 million, along with concessions on forming ‘drivers\u2019 associations’ and not being banned should a driver refuse to take a fare.<\/p>\n
Most HR departments have not got to grips with this new way of working. There is a time and place to use gig workers, but businesses should be looking at the skills within their own organisation too \u2013 many already have skills that go beyond their existing role and are keen to put them into practice. Identifying, hiring and developing staff is time consuming and expensive. Knowing your skills resource can take much of the time and effort out of hiring specialised talent if there is a suitable internal candidate.<\/p>\n