From LinkedIn, Dave Ashton makes the case against full-time employees, in part, by observing that the gig economy is good for consumers and for gig workers. He writes:
Many jobs – particularly highly-skilled or managerial ones – will continue to be better served by full-time employees than by contractors. There is no question full-time jobs will remain the preferred employment model for a majority of employers and workers alike. Every company needs dedicated resources that focus all their work energy on a single set of responsibilities. You can’t run and grow a company if you don’t have dedicated workers, and by definition independent contractors are free to work for anyone they wish.
But at the most basic level gig economy jobs are exploding because there weren’t enough of them in the first place. This increasingly important employment paradigm demonstrates that for certain types of jobs there are more efficient ways of allocating resources, leading to better services for customers, more money for contractors, and indirect benefits to consumers because of productivity boosts to economies.
In the past, the complexity/impossibility of resource pooling made it too hard for most companies to use independent contractors on any large scale, even though many could really have benefited from doing so. So consumers paid more than we should have for products and services provided by people who were full-time employees, but who didn’t really need to be to serve us appropriately. The traditional model has cost you money your whole life because in certain cases it’s less efficient than an economic model based on pooling independent resources to provide services that many people need/want.
We know now that you don’t need to pay for a full time driver to get a quality ride on demand; or stay in a dedicated hotel to find a great place to sleep; or hire a full-time maid to have your house/apartment cleaned; or have a full-time chef to get a quality meal prepared and delivered straight to you. These kinds of services, which in many cases were previously price-inaccessible to all but the wealthy, are now consumed by a much larger set of people around the world because the resources that supply those services can be federated across a broader demand market.
It’s mostly thanks to technology. Geolocalization has enabled what is truly a revolution: the virtually costless pooling of supply-side resources. It’s the pooling that foments greater supply and incites demand from a broad audience, enabling independent contractors to earn a living in ways they previously could not. That, along with the demand you provide for their services, is what is attracting them to gig economy jobs…
Read the full story at The Case Against Full-Time Employees
