Free agency
is here
are you ready to take on
this strategic component
of the future of work?
mark lanFear
A scie
ntific
perspe
ctive
introduction
2 | Free agency is here
What will the employees of a scientifc
company look like in 10 or 20 years?
or those who work in other high-tech
felds, like engineering or it?
Their work will probably be done in the
cloud on a project-by-project basis. Their
closest colleagues could be continents away.
Many won’t know what their offces look like,
because they won’t have them. After all,
in the future it’s about what you know,
not where you sit.
Think of this as free agency, supercharged.
The concept certainly isn’t new. Free agency,
or hiring workers on a contingent or contract
basis, has been a slow-burning trend for
at least the past 10 years. But it’s a hiring
practice that also has traditionally been used
as a gap-flling measure instead of a strategic
move with the company’s bottom line in
mind. That will be old-fashioned thinking in
as little as 10 years from now, and companies
that don’t start to use their talent in newer,
more innovative ways will wonder sooner
than later what they’re missing.
This white paper, a part of the Kelly
Scientifc Resources? series on the scientifc
workforce of 2020 and beyond, will discuss
the future of free agency and the strategic
steps you can start taking now to make the
most of this powerful component of the
new world of work.
For many people in the workforce today,
a routine, 40-hour week in a brick and
mortar offce is still the reality. For them
free agency continues to be nebulous—the
kind of thing they read about on futuristic
blogs. Chances are this is the kind of
employee you interact with the most at your
company, too.
You might be surprised, then, at the latest
numbers of an in-depth survey that indicates
the strength of free agency in recent years.
The
Kelly Services? 2011 Free Agent Survey
found that 44 percent of american workers
across all industries classify themselves
3 | Free agency is here
prooF in numbers.
Free agents will no longer be the exception. They will be the rule.
as free agents today. That’s a 70 percent
increase since 2008 according to the
research, and it means that free agents—
those who do not have full-time traditional
employment with an organization—account
for four out of every 10 workers employed
in the U.S.
Internationally, the percentages are smaller,
but growing. Kelly? research shows that the
free agent population is now at least 20 to
30 percent of the entire global workforce.
as soon as 2013, there will be 1.19 billion
free agents, or about 35 percent of the
worldwide workforce, according to a study
by global research frm IDC.
Know that free agency isn’t just the domain
of the young, either. The Kelly survey
found that there is a signifcant increase in
free agency across all generations in the
U.S. since 2008, with the smallest increase
surprisingly among Gen Y (age 18 – 31).
Forty-nine percent of all Baby Boomers
(age 47 – 65) and nearly 38 percent of all
Gen X workers (age 32 – 46) now consider
themselves free agents, compared with
just 25 percent of Gen Y workers.
Free agents (by generation)
25%38%49%
Baby BoomersGen XGen Y
4 | Free agency is here
Free agency may be the business buzzword
du jour
, but as early as 1997, business
thinkers had already identifed how this bold
new concept was redefning employees’
notions of work. That’s when Daniel Pink
wrote his article
“Free Agent Nation”
for
Fast Company
magazine, turning it into
a book in 2001. discussing a 10-year
retrospective with Fast company in
late 2011, pink said the causes of this
phenomenon have “only intensifed.”
“That notion of what a company does for
people has profoundly changed,” Pink
neW World, neW expectations.
The free agent workstyle already is nurturing cross-
collaboration and shunning management hierarchies.
said during the interview. “It’s kaput! It was
evaporating back then, (and) now I think
it’s fully gone. The fnancial collapse has
made people more cynical about trusting
large institutions.”
Put another way, many workers today
simply trust themselves more than their
employers to know what is right for
their career progression. This is especially
pronounced among workers in high-tech
felds, like the sciences, who have valuable
skills and are emboldened now more than
ever by their knowledge and what they bring
to the table. They’re not afraid to take risks,
and why should they be? Though demand
for their talent is high and supply is low, they
also know that corporate paternalism is dead,
along with illusions of lifetime employment
and all the traditional benefts that used to
come with it. These workers have therefore
realized that it’s no longer necessarily to their
beneft to remain super loyal to an employer.
With these new attitudes toward the
workplace have come new expectations
that are far more apparent than in years
past. Workers want more fexibility and
more freedom. They view management
hierarchies as old-fashioned. They want
empowerment to work collaboratively
across every level of an organization. They
want to be part of a less authoritative work
culture that places value on ideas, not job
titles or career climbing.
The most valuable free agents of today
already demand such components in the
workplace, and they will continue to do
so in the future.
5 | Free agency is here
the challenge.
Can organizations make the change?
Free agents are clearly leading the way in
workforce change, but questions remain: Are
employers willing to do the same? Are they
ready for change—or even aware—of the
need for it? And what makes a change in the
talent game so crucial anyway?
the long-term health of your company is
perhaps the most important reason.
Hiring for the person and what he or she
knows—not just for the job or task at hand—
will be the workforce goal of the future
as companies begin to see that people
and knowledge are the lifeblood of the
organization and perhaps the most powerful
drivers of the bottom line.
This means that hiring the right talent isn’t
just a means to an end anymore. And it’s
defnitely not just about getting a body
to fll a job description. Traditional job
descriptions, in fact, can become obsolete
the day someone starts. Yet there is still a
disconnect in the hiring process for most
companies. They are not yet treating talent,
and especially free agents, as the valuable
human capital and strategic assets that
they’ve become.
companies who fail to do so will see
valuable talent go elsewhere. It’s a fact that
reinforces what is true for most companies
as they continue to grapple with the
hypercompetitive nature of global business:
an organization’s ability to recruit and
retain talent is a vital indication of its ability
to remain competitive and relevant.
Some organizations certainly are ahead of
the game by approaching their workforce in
a more strategic way, embracing free agency,
and being open to a new workplace culture.
That’s exactly where every organization
should be headed, according to
Staffng
Industry Analysts
. Yet SIA research indicates
that just 5 percent of the world’s largest
users of contingent labor are having these
discussions, while most continue to see free
agents or contract-type workers as a simple
gap-flling measure.
This can limit a company’s vision and
distort the talent perspective, especially
if organizations continue to view the
procurement and retention of talent only
in terms of cutting costs or organizational
governance. SIA contends that retention is
not an FTE issue, but a talent issue, and that’s
what the most successful organizations will be
thinking about in the future.
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