Re-thinking gig economy in conventional workforce post-COVID-19: A

blended approach for upholding fair balance

The given research paper, co-written by Manjari Mahato, Nitish Kumar and Lalatendu
Kesari Jena seeks to develop a better understanding of maximising effectiveness of,
and to institutionalize, blended workforce models in the post COVID era. This is done
by presenting an overview of the evolution of the gig economy and proposing
frameworks to switch from a homogenous workforce to a blended workforce.

The term ‘Gig Economy’ was coined by Tina Brown for the first time in 2009 and
includes on-demand workers such as freelancers, part time workers and contractors.
This economy is based on assignment/need based tasks comprising of interactions
between multiple parties, usually involving a seller, buyer and platform. The company
need not spend any significant amount towards salaries and incentives when hiring gig
workers and it also facilitates the agile upscaling and downscaling of the workforce on
a need basis.

The gig economy can be traced back to the pre industrial era, when guild system
prevailed and merchants delegated small production tasks to employees who worked
from home. The shift from guild system to an industrial system increased dominance
of temporary gigs. By 1988, nine-tenth of the business were using temporary labour to
some extent. Since 1991, every economic downturn, has set a trend of rise in the
temporary labour market.

As businesses shifted from offline to online mode, number of short term jobs through
3rd party platforms also went up. This facilitated the formation of a triangular
relationship between producers, end users and digital intermediaries. This concept led
to emergence of various work intermediation models such as online staffing platforms
(such as Uber, Axiom), online work services (Upwork, Wonolo) and crowdsourcing
(Upwork). The crowdsourcing model further branches out into two categories:
Distribution of work into micro tasks completed by groups and then combined into
one; and content based model wherein tasks are posted as competitions. The research
 paper proposes an integrated framework of talent management cycles, with a fair
proportion of both full time and part time employees.

The strategies for talent management depends on employee perception or

‘psychological contract’. It includes transactional and relation psychological contract,
fulfilment of which leads to increased efficiency. The basic functions of psychological
contract fulfilment have been classified as: collaboration, performance management,
learning and development, rewards and recognition, career and succession planning,
organisation fit.

Collaboration: Organised team work increases the productivity of workers. It is

characterised by group brainstorming which leads to a genesis of fresh ideas and
diverse perspectives and makes problem solving easier. The companies should focus
on formation of gig discussion committees to facilitate discussion of ideas proposed
via open calls. However, collaboration in gig economy often fails due to inefficient
management because of globally distributed workforce and lack of control and trust.
This could be solved by implementation of controlling measures by organisations such
as employee tracking and emergency notification systems. There should be focus on
integration of platforms within enterprise networking to ensure co-workers are better
connected with one another. This will allow the organisation to harness both,
experience of full-time employees and distributed expertise of gig workers.

Performance Management: It has been described as the ongoing process of

communication between superiors and employees that occurs all through the year with
the goal of accomplishment of strategic objectives of the organisation. However, the
approach used for regular employees is not as efficient for gig workers as they prefer
more flexibility in their operations. The limited nature of interaction between
managers and gig workers make it further difficult to monitor their performance. The
various methods proposed to monitor part time workers’ performance can be
summarized as follows: making an intuitive dashboard of key performance indicators
for entire team to help the manager in monitoring their performance, use of short term
ratings, one on one performance discussions and two way feedbacks, and
establishment of AI chatbots for doubts and grievance redressal.
 Learning and development: The difference between the skill set employees possess
and the skills that the organisation needs could be harmful to the overall productivity,
which is why learning and development is an important part of talent management.
Organisations provide just-in-time trainings, skill trainings, stretch assignments,
workshops to build sills of their employees. In the case of gig workers, learning and
development is usually seen as their own responsibility and they fund their own
learning. However, organisations have begun providing both full time and temporary
employees with e-learning modules to facilitate development of their blended
workforce.

Rewards and recognition: This is the extra compensation given to workers to

encourage performance, and is directly linked with overall development. In the terms
of gig work, compensation refers to short term, economic inducements. They receive
bonuses only in cases of exceptional performance beyond the expectations of the
organisations. A by-product of good work is professional recommendations and
endorsements. A blended team can earn better social merit by combining the
recognition of full timers and work quality based benefits of gig workers.

Career and succession planning: Organisations must focus on mentee’s advancement

in the organisation and personal and professional growth via pyscho-social support.
Where permanent employees are restricted by career boundaries, the prevailing mode
in the gig economy is a boundaryless career. However, gig workers are responsible for
their own career development. A blended workforce can solve the hindrance caused
by intra organisational boundaries in a digitalised work, wherein many opportunities
are available globally. Keeping this in mind, the SORT (skillset, openness, rise, trace)
model has been recommended to identify suitable gig workers.

Person-organisation fit: The Mission, Vision, Goal (MVG) statement helps determine
if a person is fit for a particular organisation or not. But, this approach is rendered
useless in the case of gig workers due to the short term nature of their work. So,
technology should be used to integrate these people into the organisation and help
them fit in.
 In order to determine the change readiness of the blended workforce, use of a three
strike fit technique has been recommended, which analyses: (1) Accountability
towards people and tasks (2) Long term association with business (3) Pervasion till
successful completion of work.

All points considered, the authors have provided a COOKIE (collaboration, openness,
opportunity, knowledge, incentives, evaluation) approach to formation of blended
workforces. This helps us understand the societal influence of blended workforce
within an organisation and impact of the behaviour of gig and standard employees in a
post COVID Era.

ARUSHI JAIN
21BC212
TUTE B7 HRM