NEW APPROACHES IN HRM

20 Reports from a freelancing aggregator True lancer states that over the past few years, the gig economy has grown greatly. It currently values the global freelancer market at $2-3 billion which is growing at an annual rate of 14%. India currently accounts for $1 billion of the global market. While the US leads the race with 53 million independent workers, India has 15 million freelancers with its gig economy workers increasingly gaining independent contracts in industries like IT and programming, finance, HR, and design, among others. Drivers of the Gig economy To look closely at the projected rise of the gig economy in India, one needs to follow the journey of how technological and demographical shifts have made companies and candidates evolve their interaction with each other. Increasing digitization has meant that remote working options have become an option in front of HR professionals, often playing a key role in incentivizing employees. Co-working spaces, both offline and online, have come up which allow people to connect and make the best use of each other's qualifications to perform efficiently. Millennials and Z Gen With talent pools today becoming way more diverse in their age constitution and with Millennials and Gen Z workers increasingly becoming part of the country’s workforce, many have begun preferring to become part of the gig economy. Either under the force of lack of formal jobs and or just evolving economic conditions, studies show that as more and more companies undertake business transformation to make their processes more technologically driven, the number of gig workers are bound to go up. Increasing use of technology, like AI and automation, would also lead to the creation of new job profiles and a business’s need to look for qualified talent. In the coming years, instead of hiring outright for such positions, it’ll be possible for companies to just reach out to talent on a more project-like basis. An important aspect of the rise in tech usage in a country like India has meant that many who would’ve worked previously within the unorganized sector are now able to procure better employment. But that’s not to mean gig economy finds itself in a clear area when it comes to the ’formality’ of the jobs it generates. Most jobs created under this growing trend exist in their own informal space. Although this might seem to be an effective measure for both professionals to set their working wages according to free market operations and a company to hire people with specialized skills on a temporary basis, the real-life implementation of the model doesn’t essentially come back without its red flags.