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from the you-can-start-tomorrow...-and-finish-next-friday dept.
Over at the Harvard Business Review there's speculation that the paradigm of people working full-time for a single employer has outlived its usefulness:
Our vision is straightforward: most people will become independent contractors who have the flexibility to work part-time for several organizations at the same time, or do a series of short full-time gigs with different companies over the course of a year. Companies will maintain only a minimal full-time staff of executives, key managers, and professionals and bring in the rest of the required talent as needed in a targeted, flexible, and deliberate way.
There are two reasons such a flexible work system is now plausible. The first is societal values. Work-life balance and family-friendly scheduling are much more important to today's workers, and companies are increasingly willing to accommodate them. The second is technology. Advances in the last five years have greatly improved the ease with which people can work and collaborate remotely and companies and contract workers can find each other.
The opinion piece goes on to list how workers, employers and society in general will benefit from this shift. What seems to be missing is speculation on the down sides, both to employers and contractors. Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by LowSpeedHighDrag on Sunday September 06 2015, @01:01PM
Not a single mention of the cost of training in this. The cost in time and money for training new hires is high in many jobs and it doesn't change between a temp or contractor vs a full time employee. There is a lot of value in keeping your already trained people on staff. Not to mention the loss of knowledge that would go with such a scheme. Actually finding people that are good workers is often reason enough to keep them when things get slow. Many jobs are not just a simple plug and play (work) and people are not just interchangeable cogs. No matter how much HR wants them to be.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday September 06 2015, @01:16PM
Outsource to a body shop. They'll tell you what you want to hear: they work for cheaper, their staff are self-motivated, self-taught go-getters, not like the fat, greedy, lazy, complacent dead-beats you've had on your own staff.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by LowSpeedHighDrag on Sunday September 06 2015, @01:35PM
Yeah I've heard that one before. I could say 'Fool me once...' but it didn't even fool me the first time.
We do hire contractors where I work but mostly because we can both hire and fire them easily in the early stages of employment. Evaluating how they will work out is nearly impossible until they are actually working for you. If someone works out they are almost always hired on full time. IOW: It's tough to find good help these days. ;)
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday September 07 2015, @02:58PM
Don't worry, the under-paid employees will be expected to pay for their own training, over and over.
(Score: 1) by loic on Tuesday September 08 2015, @04:31PM
If you watch or read news, you are bound to hear about those massive layouts everywhere around the world, you should know that workers are expendable, interchangeable and that about any hobo can take any job.
Let's throw our collective knowledge to the bin; as long as executive are there with their pretty excel sheets and powerpoint quarterly summaries, everything will be fine.