Why MSMEs are turning to on-demand workers to get the job done

Companies are increasingly hiring freelancers to fill job demands rather than full-time employees. What makes this growing segment of the workforce so attractive to Businesses?

We have entered the era of the gig worker.

In spite of the challenges that freelancers face (such as unpredictable income and lack of benefits), more and more workers are giving up their traditional jobs altogether to switch to a more flexible schedule or maintain their permanent position while freelancing on the side. 

With numbers steadily growing, it only makes sense that freelancers will eventually catch the eye of business owners.

For years, companies have favored hiring permanent employees. That said, more and more businesses are opting to outsource project-based jobs to gig workers, rather than maintaining a costlier full-time staffer.

How are gig workers the answer?

To this day, many employers still attach a negative connotation to the term “freelancer”, mostly with the erroneous assumption that they are less skilled. This is no longer accurate. 

Simply put, gig work offers flexibility and freedom that traditional work cannot. With that, more and more highly skilled and talented workers are choosing to leverage their expertise and earn via project-based gigs.

Picture the following scenario: You need a professional copywriter for a particular project. It simply doesn’t make sense to hire a full-time writer because your writing needs aren’t enough to justify it.

As an MSME, hiring a full-time employee would be costly and a waste of scarce resources. However, a gig worker would be a perfect fit. The company would benefit from the freelancer’s skills for that project, pay for the service and then the two entities go their separate ways.

When considering hiring someone full time, a company must factor in benefits, health insurance and vacation time – all of which bloat costs. When freelancers are hired for projects, companies can spend a lot less as they only have to pay the gig worker for their services. 

This could be one of the fundamental reasons motivating business owners to leverage the gig economy.

In the life cycle of a business, not all undertakings require a full time employee. Some projects may even call upon skills that your current staff don’t master. 

The talent pool for freelancers is so wide, there is no skill out there that one cannot find an expert for – an expert who prefers to work on a per project basis.

While that lack of a formal structure, weak quality control and the time it traditionally took to find workers have been cited by many as obstacles to considering gig workers, platforms now exist online that address these issues. 

In Malaysia, one of the fastest growing gig workers platform, GIGPLE, has created a very unique deliverables and milestones-based system for business owners to quickly hire gig workers (or giggers as the platform refers to them) within the same day, emphasizing the “on-demand” nature of gig work required my dynamic business owners.

Register for free on www.gigple.com

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