The number of people freelancing, contracting and consulting is rising every year. The flexibility, variety and choice that freelancers offer goes hand-in-hand with companies that demand to be able to hire qualified talent as and when they need it.

And it’s clear they do need it. Between November 2022 and January 2023 there were 1.1 million job vacancies in the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics. While this is down on the levels seen a year ago, it is still almost 340,000 more than before the pandemic.

But job vacancies only tell part of the story. There is currently a digital skills shortage and the demand for employees with IT and digital skills has never been greater.

Despite the wave of redundancies we’ve seen in some of the world’s biggest tech companies in the last few months, market conditions mean the war for skilled talent continues. This is why salaries have risen by as much as 60% and greater emphasis is being placed on better working conditions and increased happiness.

The Spiceworks Ziff Davis State of IT study conducted last year amongst 1400+ IT professionals globally found that over a third would be looking for a new job in 2023, while nearly a quarter  planned to only apply to fully remote roles, with the key driver being dissatisfaction at returning to the office. Alongside this, 28% of UK workers are predicted to move into freelancing in the next five years.

Freelancers are filling the gap
So it’s unsurprising that companies are turning to the freelancing market to find skilled talent to support them. While 2020 saw fewer opportunities for self-employed workers due to projects being put on hold during the pandemic, the last two years have seen the opposite, with opportunities growing and an increasing number of professionals, particularly those with digital skills, making the move into freelancing and consultancy work.

There are now six million highly-skilled freelancers^[1] across Europe and over half of those work on digital projects. These might range from data-driven marketers and CMS software developers to SEO experts and mobile designers.

HR and talent managers are finding that they can hire freelancers with specialist skills to carry out specific projects, or to work with them on a six-monthly or yearly basis, reducing headcount without impacting on access to talent.

Another bonus is that freelancers might be more flexible than retained staff when it comes to the debate of remote or hybrid work. In a survey carried out by Malt last year amongst over 3,000 freelancers across Europe, it found that freelancers were planning to spend more time at clients’ offices in the future, embracing the hybrid world of work.

Optimising freelance skills
In turn, companies need to invest time in onboarding and briefing freelancers to maximise their value. Rather than seeing them as a temporary fix to help with a single task, they should encourage collaboration between the freelancer and other members of the team, to fully integrate them, regardless of how long their tenure is with a client.

Many of the freelancers and consultants on our platform have a solid 10 years of experience as full-time employees. They are highly skilled and dynamic, providing expertise in areas that are high in demand, and nowhere more so than at organisations going through digital transformation.

Our data also demonstrates that freelancers spend on average four hours every week developing their skills. It’s this valuable up to date knowledge and expertise that companies can harness by hiring freelancers, and independent consultants.

Unlocking capacity quickly
It takes just six days on average to hire a skilled freelancer. Compare this to the median time of 49 days to hire an engineer or 48 days to hire a researcher on a permanent basis according to a LinkedIn study in August 2021. That difference is significant when a company needs to act quickly and unlock capacity when it matters most.

As the world of work continues to evolve, companies adjust to economic constraints, and attitudes to remote or office-based working shift; digitally enabled freelancers, and independent consultants will have an increasingly important role to play in the future of the working world.

^[1] Malt’s estimation based on data from Eurostats