A report titled ‘World Economic Outlook’ published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently stated that the world is in a volatile period where economic, geopolitical, and ecological changes are all impacting the global outlook. And we’ve been witnessing the same in the last year. Inflation has soared to multi-decade highs, prompting rapid monetary policy tightening and squeezing household budgets, just as COVID-19-pandemic-related fiscal support is waning. As a result of the same, many low-income countries are facing deep fiscal difficulties. They have published perhaps the bleakest economic outlook in a decade, forecasting that the world economy will grow by only 2.7 per cent in 2023 and warning that “the worst is yet to come.”
As a direct consequence to the economy, central banks have been raising interest rates to bring down inflation. With higher interest rates, the probability of a recession is increasing, leading to layoffs, fewer jobs, and decreased consumer and corporate spending, among other effects, which are all symptoms of a slowing economy that we are already seeing in action. This economic slowdown will also impact the frequency and size of fundings in the new year. Organisations usually turn to cutting down on fixed and overhead expenses to optimize their costs, which is evident as even global giants who have all turned to downsizing to maintain their profit margins and weather the looming recession. But there has to be another way.
Recession-proofing your enterprise
In a market situation where nothing is a guarantee, the gig economy comes in as a respite as it allows enterprises of every size to variablize their fixed costs as and when required, along with allowing them to minimize their expenses. With attrition rates in 2021 alone climbing up to 28.1% and showing no signs of slowing down, enterprises are now relooking at the entire process of investing a massive amount of time and resources in the process of recruitment, training, management and retention.
With the gig economy, they are able to variablize their costs, capitalize on the agility and ability to scale their workforce up or down as per changing business requirements and priorities, and reduce the go-to-market timeline. Since the gig model also removes compliance hassles, enterprises can execute a project on tighter timelines than before. With the offer of high-skill experts on board, enterprises are also using a technical and specialised workforce to execute work on a project, milestone or contractual basis for specific requirements. This is specially relevant in the case of the IT industry where attrition has been at an all time high. Working with a contractual talent, allows enterprises to remove the pain and costs of continuous hiring, rehiring, training and retention. Today, the gig economy includes high-skill experts in roles such as IT development & design, cloud computing & dev-ops, content creation & distribution, data science & AI, among others – all employable on a project or contract basis.
Building the safety net
The gig economy has today moved from an alternate approach of work execution to a speedy, effective and go-to solution for fulfilment of work. Gaining a perspective of its ability and potential, the gig model has now become a preference for enterprises, who are shifting their ways of working to align with a fast-moving market. The plug-and-play proposition of a gig platform can prove to be a much faster and hassle-free solution for any enterprise. Whatever the scenario may be, it is now evident that gig work executed through work fulfilment platforms can foster faster innovation and extend the offer hypergrowth to enterprises like no other.
The gig workforce is projected to increase three times over from 7.7 million in 2021 to 23.5 million in 2030. This is signaling the ushering in the future – that of a new workforce and of our ways of work execution.
