Gig Workforce
Table of Contents
A gig labor force is composed of individuals who engage in working under short term, task-oriented, contract, or platform-driven arrangements, rather than having the traditional relationship of working in full-time employment.
Some common examples may be delivery personnel, taxi drivers, freelance designers, consultants, field promoters, on-call technical support staff, warehouse laborers, event support staff, and temporary project laborers.
In India, the Code on Social Security, 2020 considers an individual to be a gig worker when they perform any work or participate in a work arrangement and earn from these activities independent of any employer-employee relationship.
Why the gig workforce is growing
Gig workers are recruited by businesses when they seek to be flexible. The demand for the company’s products or services increases during festivities, sale period, delivery period, project deadlines, activities in the field, or other such times of operations increase.
For employees, gig work may provide flexibility regarding time, place and nature of work. However, it might result in lower financial stability, fewer perks, and uncertain job security than regular employment.
NITI Aayog’s estimates indicated that there were 77 lakh gig workers in India in 2020-21 and this figure was expected to rise up to 2.35 crore in 2029-30. This makes gig workforce management a significant issue for Human Resources and Operations departments.
HR challenges in managing gig workers
Gig workforce management is not similar to permanent employee management. The contract may be temporary, but the individual may not be part of the official payroll, yet the organization must track the allocation of duties, attendance records, payments, identity verification, safety regulations, and performance.
For HR and operations teams, the main challenges usually include:
- Verifying worker identity and documents
- Tracking attendance or task completion
- Managing location-wise deployment
- Ensuring timely payments or vendor billing
- Maintaining basic compliance records
- Avoiding confusion between employees, contractors, and gig workers
- Controlling access to systems, sites, or customer locations
In the context of business activities, gig workers could also have similarities with the field workforce, temporary workforce, and contractor workforce structures. This highlights the need for classification. Gig workers must not be taken lightly since the relationship is flexible.
Gig workforce and workforce control
Gig workers may help organizations become agile, but only when there is a structure to the process. Should onboarding, attendance, authorization, and payment information be done using separate messaging or spreadsheets, then visibility will be low.
For instance, if an organization makes use of temporary field staff for a specific mission, then the HR team, along with other departments such as operations, should have access to information regarding who had been deployed for this task and where the work was done.
Here is where the management of gig workforces tends to intersect with the management of contractor workforces. In larger companies, a well-organized approach to the workforce can ensure that things remain more organized without putting all workforces in the same category.
Key takeaway
With the gig workforce, companies are able to have flexibility when accessing individuals for tasks. Flexibility does not mean losing control. The HR and Operations Department will have the ability to classify employees correctly, onboard effectively, track attendance, pay employees on time, and have compliance knowledge.
Explore how Eilisys helps enterprise teams manage HR, payroll, compliance, and workforce processes in one system
