88
McKinsey Global Institute
4. Making independent work a win for all stakeholders
services are becoming less common as the share of project-based assignments grows.
88
Some pharmaceutical companies run clinical trials mainly with independent workers,
from scientific researchers to administrative staff. Previous McKinsey research shows
that two-thirds of companies with high adoption rates for digital tools expect workflows to
become more project-based than function-based and that teams in the future will organize
themselves accordingly.
89
Organizational structures are beginning to morph as digitization
allows them to connect in looser platform structures, with disaggregated tasks and more
fluid teams.
90
The ability to call in specialized help on an as-needed basis has a great deal of value for
small businesses and startups in particular. Smaller enterprises may need specialized
help at particular times—say, a marketing specialist to help during a product launch, an
accountant during tax season, or a logo designer to establish a brand identity—but may
be unable to afford having those people on staff full time. The availability of freelance
labor has vastly reduced the cost and lowered the barriers to starting a business.
91
With
minimal capital, an entrepreneur with an idea can now create a small company by calling
in specialized help on a project basis, particularly by turning to platforms such as Upwork,
Freelancer.com, or HourlyNerd, where they can identify external experts quickly.
For companies both large and small, it can be cost-effective to hire independent workers.
First, they are fully utilized; they work only when there is a need for their services. Second,
digital platforms that aggregate a global pool of workers can lower the cost for particular
tasks and make the going rate more transparent.
92
While there is often a clear business case for outsourcing some tasks to independent
workers, it does not apply universally. The pros and cons of keeping any job in-house or
turning it over to an independent worker have to be weighed carefully against the institutional
knowledge, experience, and on-the-job learning that long-term employees may provide.
(See below for more on this issue.)
But corporate use of independent workers is not solely about outsourcing. In other cases,
it unlocks new opportunities for growth, as it may free companies to invest in projects they
would not undertake at all if they had to expand full-time staff. A company that wants to
create a one-time marketing brochure may call in writers and designers to create it; the
alternative in this case is likely not hiring a traditional in-house publishing team but simply not
producing the piece. The availability of independent workers may encourage some entirely
new economic activity.
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