As appearing on the Africa Tech Week blog
Over the past few years, technology and communication tools have fuelled the gig economy worldwide, enabling employees to work on their own terms and increasing the size of the pool of employees organisations can choose from.
The gig economy is the labour market in which independent contractors provide freelance, flexible and on-demand work. It provides numerous advantages to both workers and the organisations employing them. Companies can lower fixed labour costs and hire the talent necessary for a particular project, while freelancers are able to choose projects that make the most of their talents and reflect their interests.
Applications and websites that allow gig workers to register and sign up for work have steadily increased since the late 2000s and early 2010s, and show no signs of slowing down. These platforms enable connections between workers and organisations to ensure work is delivered in line with requirements, in real time.
Technology and communication tools have helped organisations make huge leaps over the past two decades. Now, they are changing workforce behaviour.
Live chat, video calls, internet meetings and cloud-based storage solutions have enabled freelancers to work from any place in the world and stay connected. These technologies have led to the development digital workplaces, which have allowed ‘nomadic’ employees to work with their stationary counterparts and organisations from wherever they are in the world.
According to interviews conducted by the Harvard Business Review, workers in the gig economy are most concerned about finance and scheduling. This provides developers with an opportunity to develop applications such as cloud-based financial solutions packages and project management systems.
More opportunities exist in this tech-driven marketplace where people have access to diverse ‘side gigs’ (work done outside of an employee’s usual nine-to-five job). Tech providers who break into the human capital ecosystem – as companies like Uber and Upwork have done – will match job seekers to offerors, allowing them to collect a wealth of new data that provide insights into where, how and why people work.
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