Before we dwell on the pros and cons of the gig economy, we first need to understand what the gig economy is. Gig Economy is a free market system where organizations or offices hire freelancers or just workers on a short term basis or based on contracts.
In this market, an individual won’t have to be bounded to a single institution and can work in several institutions at once. Gig Economy is not a thing that’s recently founded. It has been around for a long time. The only difference is people before used to take it as a side-hustle, but in the present development of technology has developed it into a million-dollar business.
In this article, we have listed out the pros and cons that come with this form of economy. Let us deal with the cons before we move into pros.
Cons as a worker
1. Isolation
When we work in an institution, there is always one person that we complain about all the time to our other co-worker. It can be our boss or just another co-worker who seems to act more like a manager than the actual manager. The bottom point is we always have someone to socialize with, and we are hardly alone.
But when we work in a gig economy, we lack that company. Often, we work from home and have no compulsion of going to the office. We can end up working for days without any human interaction, resulting in absolute isolation from the outside world.
2) No fixed working hours
The best thing about the gig economy is flexibility. When working in a gig economy, we don’t have any fixed working hours like in a desk job. Some day we can be working for over 12 hours, and someday we won’t be working at all.
So this can create disrupt the work-life balance. Since the working hours are not consistent, we will not even realize when we are overworking, completely ignoring our personal life. This can create a problem in our relationship with family and friends.
3) Excessive Stress
One thing that makes a desk job attractive is the stability that it provides. When doing a desk job by the end of every month, we can be sure that we will be getting the salary that we are promised. But in the gig economy, we don’t have that stability.
Since we get paid based on projects that we get, how much we will earn in a month is never guaranteed. Some months we might get a lot of gigs and earn enough to go on a vacation to Bali, but some months, we might not even earn enough to pay our bills. You are never out of stress.
4) Staying self-motivated becomes a real challenge
When working at a gig economy, keeping yourself motivated to work can be hard. Especially when you work from home, and your bed is just a few steps away. It gets easier to sway away from your work and waste time on something that’s not important.
You can end up becoming lazy and not productive. You don’t have any boss to control your actions. You become your boss, so time and again, it becomes quite challenging to keep yourself on track.
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Pros as a worker
1) Flexibility
When working in a gig economy, we don’t need to be abided by only one institution. Since we are our boss, there won’t be anyone to stop us from anything. When we work in a gig economy, we have the freedom to choose our work.
We can shape our hours and the events the way we want for a better balance in life. Everything we do is based on our terms. Don’t want to work from the office? Work from home. Don’t want to work during the day? Work at night. There is just so much flexibility from all sides.
2) Earns more
As a freelancer in a gig economy, if we have expertise and skills, we can make a lot more than we earn in a desk job. Plus, as a freelancer, we can work for multiple companies that let us earn more. Working in several companies, the pay may vary, but we can always negotiate and get our work worth of pay. Also, we can choose how we want to get paid, whether monthly, weekly, or even hourly.
3) Control over creativity
In a desk job, we are usually guided by our bosses. Everything we do is confined by the guidelines that are usually set for us. Because of that, we hardly get to explore our creative potential. When we work in a gig economy, nobody is our boss, and we set our guidelines ourselves. This allows us to explore our creativity as much as we want, and however, we want.
4) Saves time and money
When we work in a gig economy, our office is a few steps away from our bedroom. Working from home as a freelancer has its perk. The only commute we will need to do is from our bedroom to our office room at home, unlike in desk job where we spend at least an hour going to and fro from the office. So working in a gig economy saves both our time and our money.
These were some pros and cons of a worker. Listed below are some pros and cons that companies get from hiring freelancers.
Pros for companies
1) Lowers the cost of doing business
While hiring freelancers, companies do not need to pay for anything more than the cost of the labor that why the gig economy is awesome. When a company first hires anyone new for a full-time job, they need to be given training, equipment, and benefits.
With the freelancers, they don’t need to pay for any of these, which helps to lessen the cost of day to day operation of the company. Also, the more employees there are in office, the more expenses the company has. So, hiring freelancers who work from their home lessens the expenses.
2) Less Investment
In a company hiring full-time workers is an investment. They need to be paying their employees for the work they do and for the work that they don’t do as well. They need to give bonuses and benefits, which can add up to be quite a lot of amount.
However, when they hire freelancers, they don’t need to provide all these so that the investment companies will be making will be quite less. They will be hiring workers who are already experts in their field, so they won’t have to spend on training as well. This structure makes it much easier for companies to meet market demands, initial goals, and budget restrictions.
3) Have the options of choosing experts
When hiring freelancers, companies can select the best of the best. They don’t have the restriction of time or space or boundary. A company from America can hire a freelancer from Asia to do the work. And since it’s a free market, there are a lot of options available. Companies can carefully judge them based on their portfolio and choose who the best.
4) Work delivered on time
While working with freelancers, one thing that companies can be sure of is that their work will get done on time. As a company, when hiring freelancers, they usually give them a deadline under which they need to finish the work. The whole contract gets based on the same condition, so they do not need to worry about not getting their work done on time.
Cons for companies
1) Less reliable workers
Some freelancers are in the industry only because they think it’s comparatively easier than a desk job. They don’t have much expertise and skills. If a company ends up hiring such workers, the job done won’t be any good. So, in the gig economy, the risk of hiring the wrong person to do the job is always there.
2) No control over the work period
When a company hires a freelancer, they usually sign a contract based on their will. If someone completes the work expertly but does not want to continue working for the company, they will have to say no over that. Plus, they also can’t have any control over the working way or method of the freelancer.
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