“All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities.”
David Mitchell – Cloud Atlas
The revolution we are talking about here is the rapid changes that are taking over the labour landscape. We have all heard a lot about the change in how we work over the last two years as many of our workplaces were relocated to our homes. However, we believe that the changing landscape will not stop anytime soon and will change even further.
Why is this change happening?
The reasons behind the emergence of these changes are threefold;
1) The covid -19 pandemic has obviously, been a significant accelerator of the trends we are seeing with many people forced to relocate their offices to their homes,
2) Labour shortages have given power back to workers who can now leverage their skills to negotiating better work-life balances and
3) Many highly skilled workers are turning to contract labour as opposed to full-time employment.
Talent Alpha has named this change the A3 revolution, A3 standing for anytime, anyplace and anywhere. In this blog, we take a look at what is meant by these and why it is seen as a revolution.
Anytime
What do we mean by anytime? All three of the drivers above of the labour landscape revolution have opened workers eyes to the idea of working flexible hours, for example, during the pandemic, parents who were tasked with being home school teachers and childminders alongside their day job. This meant that they were forced to change their working hours into the evenings and early mornings. While thankfully our children are back at school, employees have seen that they can work flexible hours with the same or increased productivity.
Anywhere
The pandemic and the coinciding talent shortages have made many organisation rethink their traditional talent sourcing models. To fill gaps in the workforce, many businesses have begun to engage more freelancers, contractors and gig workers. We are seeing companies change the way they work, moving from role-based work to project and job-based work, making it easier to engage short-term non-permanent workers such as freelancers. The benefits are not only on the organisation side, more and more workers are moving to freelance work to take control of the work they do and increase their income. A recent study by Upwork found that 60% of freelancers who left a full-time job to become freelancers make more money than they did in their previous jobs.
Anywhere
While flexible hours and working from home has been a considerable benefit to many workers, particularly parents, many workers are running with the idea of remote working. As people can now work from anywhere and are no longer needed in a physical office, many are moving to Croatia and Barbados. They are offering remote working visa’s. Businesses must adapt to allowing work from where they feel most comfortable if they want to retain their top talent. There are many considerations that enterprises must consider when allowing workers to work from different jurisdictions, such as compliance with local employment laws, compliance tax laws, the risk of permanent establishment and corporate tax. You can find out more on how to avoid these risks in our blog here.
While the A3 model will require a major upheaval in business processes, they must join the revolution if they want to remain competitive.
