Free Agent
Backlash
There is an American
employee backlash looming. Many employees are becoming the new
"free agents." Human Resource experts are seeing a
resentment of employers who cut jobs while adding workers
responsibilities with little or no compensation. Today, employees
are giving up their fight to hang on to their full-time careers
despite a tight labor market. Many employers realize they need to
outsource certain aspects of their businesses to be cost-effective.
There's now an acceptance that free agents are part of the
landscape.
Most small business
today are forced to use free agents in some capacity. And that's
helped the numbers of free agents surge. The Bureau of Labor
Statistics estimates that at least 14 million Americans are working
as self-employed free agents, a group that includes
independent associates, contractors, freelancers and other
independent professionals. Many are skilled ex-executives. About
four-fifths of the 180,000 independent professionals are over 35
with an average of 15 years of corporate experience.
Ron Bird, chief
economist for the Employment Policy Foundation in Washington, DC,
says self-employed free agents are important to employers for
specialized projects. "[Free agents] are very important in
terms of their impact on the economy," he says.
Notwithstanding
employers yearn for the old-fashioned loyalty of decades past. They
say, "If only people were still loyal. I need to find myself
some loyal people." But the terms of loyalty have changed
dramatically in the new millennium."
Employers started a
revolution with the lean-and-mean layoffs of the 1980s that made
loyalty a two-way street, and now they're trying to win back the
loyalty they lost. Savvy employees are behaving like entrepreneurs,
selling their skills in the marketplace. People aren't clinging to
jobs.
We offer this
advice to employers: Give up the quest for loyalty, and start
thinking of each employee as a free agent. If it would be better to
outsource a project, just do it. See your outside free agents as
vendors, and strive to become their best customer. Let projects flow
between a core group of full-time workers and a web of outside free
agents. Soon you'll create a wide talent pool where every project is
a transaction. Believe that employers need to finish the revolution
they started.
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