Gigger, Patchworker, Free lancer or contingent workforce? Alternative types of work

Now more than ever before, the concept of “work” is changing. We are dissecting it, and so are employers; there are serious consequences that are only beginning to show themselves. The implications for the future of work are terrible and horrifying if you ask the average 9-to-5 worker. However there is a new opportunity for those who decide to work on their own terms and reinvent their life. What is a job, exactly? Is it a set of responsibilities we perform in a six-by-six-foot cubicle? Is it any set of tasks that provides us with health insurance and some paid time off? Do we need to live in the same state where our job has an office, or can we be located someplace else? Or maybe switch the location we live year after year? Which are the elements that are the most important to employers and employees? Why every HR executive needs to understand this growing workforce referred to by many different terms including contingent workers, giggers, temps, consultants, independent contractors, and freelancers. Whatever the label, these workers currently account for nearly one-third of the U.S. workforce, and that number is predicted to rise, due in part to the combination of a slow economic recovery and technological advances that make data sharing seamless and readily available to the masses. The continued rise in unemployment numbers across the world, lack of corporate loyalty from employees, and a willingness by corporate managers to outsource in order to “only pay for what they can use” are some of the reasons why you as an HR leader, executive or consultant should be aware of the growing contingent workforce so as to deal with employees, contractors or free lancers, managers that would like to outsource or yourself in the event you would like to become a patchworker yourself and change your current life

Target audience would be HR Professional in general and business unit manager that are looking for talent and would like to understand current tendencies in worldwide labor market. Particularly for IT or telecommunications managers which are facing hard time filling technical jobs in a full employment industry

At the end of this session participants will be able to: - Understand current tendencies in workforce planning, - Enhance the understanding of a great portion of the technical workforce, - Understanding of the Patchworker agenda – Identify specific locations for sourcing talent based on the type of economy: manufacturing, or service-centric. – Assists C level executives, Directors and department Managers that are looking for efficiencies in using an alternative workforce.

Who are the Turkers? Worker Demographics in Amazon Mechanical Turk http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jwross/pubs/SocialCode-2009-01.pdf The 9-to-5 Cure By: Kristin Cardinale Drake Bennett, “The End of the Office... and the Future of Work,” The Boston Globe, January 17 2010 www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/01/17/the_end_of_the_office_and_the_future_of_work Wikipedia, s.v. “Crowdsourcing,” http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing?wasRedirected=true

		Cynthia Bergallo Okkralabs View Profile