Are you looking forward to working in an economy driven by freedom and flexibility? Are you dreaming of freelancing but still being able to operate as an entrepreneur? Well, then gig the way forward. The disruptive attitude of the millennials has led to the need for uberisation.
In the prevailing conditions of the global market, work and the workplace are witnessing a revolution due to the changing preference of the young working class and also their inclination towards the ‘gig economy’. To quote, Airbnb has gathered the same number of hotel rooms as Hilton Hotels amassed in over 90 years in business. Similarly, Uber is the world’s largest taxi company, but does not own any cars! The effect of such Uberisation can be seen on the giants in the industry, as Infosys and Wipro are considering exploring the idea of uberised workforce which is spreading like wildfire.
‘Uberisation’ or the app-driven labour market where talent works on a demand-supply model moving across projects and organisations as per the demand and their interest areas, is a new catchphrase that can change the employment scenario gradually over the coming the years. Thinking about Spotify, Netflix and Airbnb, each follows the same business model and taps into global demand and wide diversity.
With this on-demand model, the era of no ownership has also emerged. Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is a model for traffic without ownership. For example, we pay a monthly fee for Spotify, we tell the app where we are going and get instant access to Ubers, buses, and so on. Everything is available just in time and ownership is no longer needed. This model leads to the creation of new industries and a host of opportunities to entrepreneurs. The clear purpose is to bring about a shift from when work used to be a place to go to, to making it a series of tasks to be carried out remotely via “the cloud”. Combining real-time data, mobile payments, instant gratification and dynamic pricing, this emerging model is still in its infancy but is growing quicker than expected.
While Uberisation of workforce caters to the millennials, it is also a cost saving technique for companies and empowers them to compete in an ever-shifting tech scenario. In this ever-changing and challenging environment, Uberisation is being taken into consideration by employers all over the world and can become a preferred strategy for the Indian companies. Large government-aided agencies like NASA have taken to hiring part time, flexible workers for ambitious space projects. In India, the Union government hired freelancers to digitisation of documents as part of the
Digital India initiative.
Gig economy is being adopted across generations, is gathering high-value gigs and is not just limited to the services sector. It has arrived and is here to stay.