What will be the impacts of freelancing in 10 years?

In the United States, freelancers already represent 36% of all workers. In France, only 15% of workers are self-employed. But this population is experiencing significant growth, the concrete impacts of which we will be able to measure on the market only after ten years. We cannot yet identify the flight of employees to freelancing as the only reason that would explain the talent shortage we are currently experiencing. On the other hand, such dynamics may well arise as talents choose work environments, contract types, or collaboration methods that are more suited to their needs. In 10 years, what impacts could we observe following the emergence of freelancing? What could the world of work of the future look like? In this article, find the prospective visions of several freelancing actors, shared during the Free-Up Festival, on the transformations that could take place in the world of work.

A strong soft skills culture

Hard skills have always taken precedence over the resume. But soft skills have been gaining in importance in recent years. Self-employed people effectively have a double hat: they must master their expertise to successfully carry out their missions but they are also encouraged to develop their soft skills. For example, it may involve learning skills in negotiation, problem solving, communication, communication, emotional intelligence, languages (if they want to position themselves in a foreign market), etc. With equal hard skills, how will companies choose the freelancer who will support them? This is precisely where soft skills are so important. The challenge, for freelancers, will therefore be to build prospecting and sales strategies based on your uniqueness. To use the examples mentioned above, a company whose mission involves strong transformation challenges would undoubtedly prefer a profile that will be able to demonstrate pedagogy, and has solid interpersonal communication skills.

But this valorization of soft skills could affect the entire market in order to move towards a soft skills culture. It is, in fact, a boon for all talents who could thus be recognized in all their capacity. Like freelancers, employee profiles are likely to be inspired by this “plasticity” of skills in order to appeal to companies. A good thing for companies but a major challenge for talents because they will have to find a way to stand out, other than by mastering their expertise.

Moreover, we can draw an obvious parallel with artificial intelligence, the use of which is spreading massively in all so-called “intellectual” professions. We are already talking about the automation of 30% of the tasks carried out by tertiary professions. Cultivating human qualities will therefore be a prerequisite, even before becoming a competitive advantage. Intelligent collaboration between “hard” skills (with high replaceable potential) and soft skills (the very nature of humans) will be the strength of tomorrow's workers. This will therefore require a holistic approach, where soft skills become the background on which technical skills are deployed.

Freelance communities

Successful freelancers are well-surrounded freelancers. Whether it's mentors to support them or other freelancers who are experiencing exactly the same problems, the era of solitary freelancing will soon be over. Freelancing offers greater freedom of choice for people who choose this status, but that doesn't mean it leads to isolation. On the contrary, freelancing offers a new framework for collaboration where you can choose your customers, but also your business partners on joint projects.

In order to meet the needs of businesses, we could see the multiplication of teams made up of freelancers, or even communities that cluster around certain strong players in the freelancer ecosystem. This therefore requires developing a community spirit, which recognizes the strength of the collective, as well as its benefits (e.g.: improvement of expertise, business providers and consequently, increase in turnover).

Law firms could be a good source of inspiration for creating a new regulatory framework. By partnering with firms, new lawyers commit themselves to a certain number of cases, in exchange for the reputation of the firm to which they will be affiliated. Self-employed persons could thus have the opportunity to get closer to a recognized collective, while benefiting from the legal specificities specific to the status of self-employed. A way to seduce businesses that fear the crime of bargaining.

Towards a multi-activity of talents: employees & freelancers

At the end of 2023, employees still had reservations about the issue of 100% freelancing. Not that the idea doesn't appeal to them, since almost 60% of employees plan to become a freelancer in their career (among those who believe they have a job that can be done as a freelancer) *. But the obstacles, often financial fears, deter them from taking the plunge.

How can we help these talents to work as a freelancer, while maintaining their current security? Slashing would be a first response. There are thus two schools: those who alternate between periods of freelancing and paid employment or those who are employed, to which they add complementary activities. Moreover, it is the second option that is more popular (63% of employees want to keep their job to have additional income, compared to 50% of people who are considering leaving their current position).

This is not without consequences for companies since it could well shake up their work processes, which are easy to foresee:

• the normalization of teleworking : today, teleworking is losing ground since some companies choose to return to 100% face-to-face. But if freelancing is gaining momentum, we can assume that workers want to better control their productivity time (except for new hires, teleworking has a positive impact on the productivity of employees) and therefore the work environment in which they will carry out their daily missions.
• reducing the time spent in meetings : many employees complain about the time spent in meetings, to the detriment of the time spent producing their operational work. We can imagine (and this is the case with some companies that have put in place an internal policy dedicated to good meeting practices) that companies will change their culture in order to reduce the duration of meetings or by adopting new means of collaboration, in particular by giving priority to asynchronous feedback, in the same way as the services provided by freelancers.
• Work arrangements in favor of slashers : companies, aware of the advantage of freelance profiles to nourish them in terms of innovation, could thus find the same advantage to multi-active profiles. Instead of partitioning working time, we can imagine greater flexibility, for example by setting up the 4-day week to allow slashers to carry out their ancillary activities during this day off.

We can therefore imagine that the multi-activity of talents will be the perfect compromise, both for talents who want to explore several ways of working and for companies that can gradually adapt their culture in order to integrate freelancing as one mode of collaboration among others.

In 10 years, we can therefore imagine the job market as a dynamic ecosystem where talents truly take control of their careers. Whether they become 100% freelancers or prefer multi-activity, companies will necessarily change their culture in order to adapt to the changes that will quickly take place. If we look at all of these projections, we notice the same common thread: humans will regain their place at the heart of the collaborations. But businesses will need support to trigger these changes. Are you going to be one of the precursors who acculturate businesses?

*Data from the survey conducted by the Viavoice polling institute, in partnership with Beager (October 2023).