Gig Economy is for Real - Learning to Lead

“Where giggers were once responding to market conditions, they are now creating the conditions, disrupting the traditional workforce as we know it.”?

-Korn Ferry Institute

The terminology - ‘gig’ is appropriated from a performance culture where we see musicians play specific time engagement or a ‘gig’ is no longer limited to the music space, as we saw in the pandemic. The increasingly expanding gig economy, under its gamut, has contract workers, freelancers, crowdsourced staff, and several others who were hired for limited engagements.?

As we saw a shift towards ‘work-from-home’, we saw a steep rise in digitally connected independent workers filling temporary skill gaps in this gig economy.?

We witnessed many resignations and layoffs as several corporates struggled amidst the pandemic. The gig culture has established a strong foothold during this time and stood out for its flexibility, connectivity, and easy collaborations.?

Did this work for our businesses to thrive??

Running two companies with a team of gig colleagues in a digital world, I have learned to embrace this new approach to leadership with ease.?

Does this mean that the gig economy is an efficient enabler? Yes, absolutely.?

Working with a fragmented, diverse and remote team has enabled my business with efficiency and great collaborative opportunities.?While gig work has conventionally been the realm of creative professionals and project-based workers, it has expanded to verticals such as education, health care, and insurance. The war for talent is a war for skills that are in real shortage. Organizations realizing this truth are evolving successfully.?

Approaching the Gig Leadership

Organization leaders are tasked with succeeding in the gig economy and ultimately will be judged on how they managed to scale up with a flexible workforce.?

Do you have everything ready for this evolving pace of work to succeed??

Sure, handling a virtual and unstructured team is not an easy task and involves quite a bit of retraining and collaboration. In the future, the transition from a straightjacket and rigid leadership to a more flexible approach will lead to a more productive workforce.?

Now, how should we approach management, discipline, and performance reviews for a gig workforce, considering they are not the regular employee type??

Being a leadership coach myself, I feel it is important to mentor gig workers and enable them for the future. We could say that there’s not a fixed career path for gig workers in specific organizations, but there’s always room for optimized coaching and guidance for their skill and career development.?

The idea is to give them space. Don’t try to inhibit or make them conform to unnecessary protocols and rules. If you find them passionate and invested enough, your encouragement will help them not only as a professional but will also yield rich dividends for the company.?

The onus on Leadership is huge. The leaders and managers need to shift gears.?

The cheese has moved. You have to make your move too.

Adapting to the Changing Corporate Landscape

In our quest to remain relevant and sustain our businesses, we must accept the need to turn to external talent as and when needed.??

So, how did we adapt??

The Way Forward

From a leadership perspective, we must consider freelancers and flexible teams as an important part of the talent pool and give them equal consideration in terms of their output and assessment.?

If you are new to this structure, I would strongly recommend involving the senior leadership in these discussions and communicating the value of this novel approach. You can provide a ‘toolkit’ to eliminate any potential barriers that may arise and key to overcoming them.?

Most importantly, it is vital to establish clear communication concerning this new leadership style and its immediate and long-term implications within an organization.?

One thing everyone is fairly confident of is that roles in the future will be different. We are going to have a blended workforce. By preparing now, organizations can get ahead of the curve to ensure they don’t just survive but thrive in the future world of work.????

Shilpi Singh is a leadership coach & a creative entrepreneur. She believes everyone is a leader. She coaches leaders to #FliptoFlourish. She coaches women leaders to own their space ( #Reclaimyspace) and (#FlylikeaGirl). Write to her at [email protected] for coaching engagements and women leadership & mentoring interventions.