Opinion: The Flex Economy – New Zealand’s flexible workforce in 2015

A job for life is no longer. Jon Rice, co-founder and director of virtualRPO, says that now more than ever, Kiwi employees are embracing the flex economy and creating their careers by design.

Increasingly, Kiwi workers are seeing how a flexible or portfolio career helps to build a career as they want it, by design. The growing popularity of flexible or portfolio careers centres on the fact that business and HR teams want to keep headcounts down, and employees want greater variety and flexibility in their careers.

Whereas previous generations may have worked in one role or even for one company their whole life that is extremely rare or even desirable to see in 2015. The younger generation of talent is actively seeking more variety than the older generations in their career and work employment portfolio.

In fact, recent research by Ardent predicted that by the end of 2017, nearly 45% of the world’s total workforce will be comprised of contingent workers, including independent contractors and freelancers.

Businesses will be left out in the cold if they wait until 2017 to embrace this fundamental shift in employment and staffing. So, what is driving these employment changes, and how can HR professionals seize the opportunities presented by the flex economy.

Fiscal prudence of the GFC still evident in companies 

Rice says that increasingly, companies are seeing contracts and project-based work as a wise solution to ensuring there’s sufficient resource to meet demands, without increasing their headcount. He says this gives people the scope to have a much more flexible work career.

Despite the relatively robust Kiwi economy, many New Zealand-based companies are still reluctant to increase their permanent headcount for a number of reasons: 
  • There’s still a hangover from the global recession, and Kiwi companies are doing what they can to keep permanent staff headcount the same
  • In many cases and out of necessity to get projects done, companies need to employ flexible or part-time employees
Rice say that the desire to keep staff numbers down is a constant driver of the emerging flex economy. He says in 2015 it is commonplace to have a contractor working in-house or see a team pulled together to resource a specific project which is dismantled upon completion or delivery.

Simple actions HR professionals can take to make use of the flex economy
  • Determine what percentage of your workforce is contingent or working on a contract basis
  • Identify any projects that have a fixed start and end date and consider whether a part-time or fixed-term contractor could be a better fit for the role than diverting the time and resource of your existing permanent staff
  • Familiarise yourself with contingent recruiters and contractors so that you don’t get left in the lurch should an important project or contract requiring urgent resource arise
  • Treat contractors or contingent staff as well as you treat your permanent team. You might want to use them again in the future for another project, and also they may be so good that you decide to offer them a permanent role within your business.
About the author: Jon Rice is co-founder and director of alternative and on-demand staffing solution virtualRPO. 

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