talent management

The impact of the freelancer on the organisational knowledge use & development

Posted on By Koenraad Seys
A recent article in MIT’s SLOAN review indicates that three quarters of respondents to their 2020 global survey of 5,118 managers now view their workforces in terms of both employees and non-employees (https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-future-of-work-is-through-workforce-ecosystems/?og=featured).  The workforce eco-system has become more complex than the long term employee who builds on a linear career in line with company expectations.
For example, some organisations offer development opportunities not only to their own employees but also to those in their greater ecosystem community.
Freelancing is not for outliers anymore. Some countries, like the Netherlands, have a specific legal framework defined for them (ZZP – Zelfstandig Zonder Personeel). This has an impact on organisations, the way they work, engage and value knowledge acquired or generated over time when working and interacting. Fending off the opportunities made available by these itinerant workers is not an option.
According to Eurostat, that is collecting data from the European member states, people who were self-employed in 2018 amounted up to 14% on average. Professionals make up nearly a quarter of the self-employed in Europe. According to  Statista.com a large 55% of freelancers in Europe work in IT and marketing and communication.  IT makes up for a quarter of the freelancers in Europe ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/946967/freelancers-in-europe-by-sector/ ). For the period between 2000 and 2011 their number nearly doubled according to the https://freelancersmovement.org/ .
Although there is no clear definition of what a freelancer is, Stephanie Rapelli defines freelancers as ‘self-employed workers, without employees, who are engaged in an activity which does not belong to the farming, craft or retail sectors. They engage in activities of an intellectual nature and/or which come under service sectors’.
In an outlook on what next freelancers look, Forbes predicts the diversification of the freelance population and integration in a mixed corporate knowledge network: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonyounger/2019/05/04/what-the-next-generation-of-freelancers-will-look-like/#39b7994353ad. They will cover more domains, choose to freelance earlier in their career than current freelancers.
The need to realise more complex projects or business goals for which organisation will contract them, it introduces links and relations that are rather based on coopetition rather than that they are pure competitors. When posting for a job, freelancers are each others competition. Once the contract obtained and the job started they are imbedded in teams with other freelancers or company employees. They may have similar, overlapping or complementary knowledge and expertise. They become colleagues.
These continuously shifting relations demands flexibility but also opens options for networking and sharing. Freelance networks with like minded professionals even competing for the same assignments are not contradictory as their offering is not scalable (one can only take one mission at the same time, an hour can only be sold once). Once on a mission referring a new request to a co-freelancer in the network will help all parties involved in the staffing process.
See also Stowe Boyd in his keynote speech for the Social Now Europe 2015 when he talks about Deep Culture where more stress is put on loser connections with a need for more creativity – combined with agile (self steering teams).
As also recalled by Amy Edmondson and Jean-François Harvey in their book Extreme Teaming, the cross-pollination that happens at the interstices of knowledge domains, experience sets and frames of reference are most inspiring and a source of radical innovation. Newly formed, temporary teams assembled from members form various backgrounds often set the stage for knowledge recombination and innovation. Social network theory suggests that highly diverse teams can obtain valuable knowledge from interpersonal relations outside the team.
This mixing of people from different back-ground and experience will stress the need to pay attention to the interactive skills and openness to share ideas in a continuous search for adding value, growing a process or service provided, in a context of continuous innovation.
According to https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/freelance-stats/ about 60% are looking for a stronger community and more chances to collaborate.
Is this shifting knowledge ownership to professions or corporations? In reality this is already the case as a knowledge corpus is often owned by a group of professionals, acquired through education and reinforced through experience. It is based on common understanding, experience and general information and communication shared and studied. Product communities and certainly Open Source Software initiatives can be considered as communities sharing a common interest and related knowledge and know-how. The latter have also a common goal and purpose. Product communities however are vendor led and facilitate the sharing of product and specific technical knowledge, leading to different sub-communities with their own specific interests in mind. Broader communities addressing more or less specific roles exist as well. They may limit themselves as content sharing platforms requiring subscription as www.techrepublic.com/ , addressing a technical public or more interactive virtual groupings like www.mindtools.com or www.12manage.com . These highly curated platforms thrive, more peer oriented networks are harder to find and when they exist they have a hard time persisting.
Still, the majority of companies consider freelancers as temporary workers and are not considered as a member of core staff. Once the contract is terminated the freelancer is revoked access to the systems of the company they were working for. They are not part of the internal social network with whom they shared information and knowledge during the period in which the contract was active. From a legal and competition point of view this is completely understandable. There is a risk that by accessing internal information they can divulge this knowledge with the client they are currently working on. On the other hand isn’t  the reason why you engage freelancers to introduce experience, insight and knowledge so it can cross pollinate and enrich the already existing company insights.
All newcomers, be it employee or freelancer, come with sector or technical experience during other assignments with your competitors. Also, mobility of employees has increased.  Both trends lead to a more volatile strategic advantage for companies. Unless you want to limit their input to execute what is told, you would better open up. Encouraging knowledge sharing platforms covering both technical topics in the style of mindtools or 12manage and why not generic sector oriented communities can certainly speed up evolution and innovation in a guild like manner like https://www.businessarchitectureguild.org/ focusing on informed, creative and connected membership. The common frame of reference is also to be considered as a a point of reference for quality.
As an organisation or company you can profit from setting up alumni communities. It offers opportunities to have regular contacts with them, curate the information shared, tap ideas. More permeating borders allow current employees and freelancers to interact on this platform increasing the interaction and flow of ideas. Of course some of these will pass over to other alumni communities of competing organisations, however this goes both sides. At moments you will be on the sending side at others you will be on the receiving side.
Working with knowledge from freelancers is used in an opportunistic task oriented manner. A lot of knowledge is available for those who want, dare and can access it. It may not be without risks or bring undivided advantages, but it will guarantee a fresh influx of ideas and experience.

The one trick pony syndrome and shorter shelf-life of knowledge

Posted on By Koenraad Seys
Attracting talent with efficiency in mind may back fire on the long term in a context of higher flux and need for differentiation based on innovation, evaluating the need for specialisation.
When looking at the majority of recruitment advertisements for both in-house and freelance jobs a lot of attention is given to experience. Focus is on acquired experience and tasks well performed in the past by the job candidate, on efficiency and specialisation, confirming the key of modern organisations operating as a well oiled machine. Once on the job, focus goes to a particular job.
This is stressed by the tendency for specialisation and the related engagement of specialised freelance or independent workers, staying only a short period until the job is done, acting in multi-disciplinary teams. This agile or ‘lean’ talent is pushed for specialisation and specific jobs where the experience obtained is repeated at every engagement. This however may lead to narrow mindedness and lack of oversight or even sense of overall purpose. As is illustrated by the banking experience. Now that the need for innovation and customer orientation is increasingly central to the success of a product or service, specialisation will hamper the definition of a broader answer to a customer’s need.
In an economic environment with the instability we know and a growing life expectancy this model may not be sustainable in the future.
The average life expectancy in the Western world hovers around 75-80 years and is expected to continue to increase. Higher education levels make that we spend more time at school. Depending on the education culture more people are coming on the labor market at 23-25 with at maximum student working experience. Under pressure of previous economic downturns and the need and/or will to mobilise youth, retirement age in Western Europe came earlier, in the late 50s on even 50 or 55. This leaves us with 25 to 30 years of economic activity and about 55 years of economic inactive life, of which some 30 years living of state pension or retirement fund. In light of the increasing percentage of elderly, this places an increasing burden on a decreasing group of economic active of which a part will be involved in the care for the elderly. They will have to provide for the funds needed to support retirement pensions.
Added to that, figures of Forbes, McKinsey and Oxford university indicate that the top jobs in demand of 2010 did not exist in 2004 and that nearly half of current jobs are under pressure of automation. This would stress the shorter period of economic activity.Screenshot 2020-09-14 at 15.33.29
Looking at skill deployment and the structure of job groups it is remarkable that most of jobs are generational. A job is learned in school or shortly after graduation. New disciplines or new jobs get introduced together with new groups of graduates. It is commonly held that you will continue this job until retirement or when it goes out of demand. Given evolution of economy, technology and the job market the latter is increasingly the case.
In the context of an increasing shift to freelance employment participating in specialist tasks as they are engaged by companies on project basis, seems to lead to a dichotomy in the work force. The company manages direct employment contracts with management and coordination profiles. Technical specialists are engaged from an increasing pool of freelancers, consultant and temporary working via agencies. This may result in increased agility on company level and the products or services provided, but it risks to be at cost of organisational sustainability. This trend is in line with increasing specialisation, due to technical complexity or driven by efficiency.
The one trick pony syndrome or at least the expectation of people hiring somebody for a specific task or skill and being convinced that this is and will be the only trick the hired person has on his sleeve is untenable for the future society. Can we permit people having ever shorter careers. In light of the economic and technological evolutions and the concept of stable specialisation (as described above), it is to be estimated that the active period of an employee, freelancer or independent professional is to end far before they come to the age of 50, leading to an active life of less than 20 years. Even when society manages to have enough income for its citizens not to work and provide us all with a basic income, the psychological need of being busy and useful will result in a need for successive re-skilling and learning.
Shouldn’t we be looking at more agile talent as advocated in the HBR interview with John Younger leading to more sustainable organisational, company or team agility. Engage the people that work for an organisation and focus on skills and competences will lead to longer relationships regardless the contractual relationship. People are involved in tasks that evolve with the needs of the organisation and its customers. They need to adapt and learn through time responding to contextual needs.
In their article ‘How Work Will Change When Most of Us Live to 100’ Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott  paint a picture of life where we go through as a succession of working and learning periods. After a few years of career we re-enrol to school, college or university to learn new things. The structure of a linear life of growing up and getting through school by the age of 25, working and then retiring will cease to exist. It certainly will have an impact on the definition of wage  and career policies and perceptions but also on recruitment and the way we organise and fund education.
Structured education as presented by schools and institutions will and already are not the only sources of gathering knowledge. Already, new skills and trends are not exclusively taught at school. Continuous learning through interacting and observing the environment where we live in, is a corner stone we should look for when staffing organisations and jobs. Experience still matters but will be much less defined by ‘having done the job for a number of years’ and more by being able to englobe experiences and bringing them in the job at hand. A focus on underlying skills and competencies to adapt to new situations and the capability of incremental learning will (have to) end up weighing more. The availability of different learning experiences and possibilities provided by the employer will be included in the evaluation when choosing whom to work for in a still tight and maybe even tighter pool of knowledge workers and professionals.