A 22-year career in the advertising industry gave Zoe Jones the confidence to strike out on her own as a freelance marketing consultant three years ago. Variety, as they say, is the spice of life, and it’s certainly something Jones’ current portfolio is full of, from clients whose offices she works from each week, to others who will engage her for a couple of days a month.
As a freelancer, Jones’ workload covers anything from brand identity and positioning to agency management, implementing audience insight tools, pitching company leaders as event speakers, helping managers with hiring and even mentoring teams within her client base. While she’s busier than ever, she’s more fulfilled, too.
“You do get committed to these companies, because when you are embedded in the business as I often am, it isn’t that dissimilar to a full-time job,” says Jones, whose consultancy is called The Zoder Collective.
“But you do have more variety and flexibility. I’m inspired by the different things I’ve seen, and I can apply that thinking or those learnings from other clients to new ones. That’s probably the most exciting thing for me. I’d find it very hard to go back to just one role for that reason.”
Working with freelance contractors like Jones is becoming a more appealing solution than always hiring permanent talent, and is becoming a trend beyond the classic case of a startup needing to grow and hire quickly, without the commitment and risk of a full-time employee. Full-time freelancers now spend around 25% and 24% of their time, respectively, working with medium and large-sized companies, according to the Freelancing in Europe 2024 report recently released by Malt, Europe’s largest freelance talent marketplace.
Moving from resource gaps to skills needs
It’s also not just a case of companies using freelancers to simply fill resource gaps created in periods of high staff turnover or a competitive hiring market. Malt’s insights show that more companies are looking to freelancers to fill specific skills gaps. Roles in the fields of technology and data, marketing and communications, art and design, and business consulting are most in demand on Malt’s platform.
Malt’s report also found that freelancers are occupying jobs that are 25% more disrupted than the market average, based on the Boston Consulting Group’s Skills Disruption Index, which ranks roles according to the emergence of new skills and any changes in the importance of certain skills. That’s in part down to the heightened exposure to different challenges freelancers have compared with a full-time employee and a drive to stay competitive, meaning freelancers tend to spend between four and six hours a week on upskilling and professional development - leading 63% of them to feel more skilled than their clients. Examples of freelancer profiles on the Malt platform that are in highly disrupted roles include data engineers, data scientists, web developers, network engineers, architects and industrial designers.
Charlotte Gregson, Malt’s UK country head, says the data points to the trend of freelancers potentially making up the majority of the workforce in the next 10 years.
“We’ve already seen, for example, in some of the tech and IT teams using Malt, up to half of the team being freelancers because the clients want that variety of thought and ways of working, particularly in a landscape where things like coding change really quickly,” says Gregson.
Working with freelancers is also an opportunity for companies to diversify not just skills profiles, but personality ones too
“However, it now goes beyond just hiring someone to do a job or a project. One of the ways freelancers bring value is in how they can help upskill teams, rather than simply filling a capacity need. Companies are bringing someone into an organisation with a lot of tacit knowledge and learning that can be shared and remain after the freelancer has left.”
With layoffs continuing across big names like Amazon and Tesla, as well as numerous media organisations, working strategically with freelancers means companies can maintain, and even gain, momentum in the toughest business climates.
“Everyone’s operating under the same uncertainty, and a lot of companies have economic constraints, but if you can respond to the market quickly, that for sure puts you at a real advantage,” says Gregson.
“If you look at some of the recent economic downturns, for some businesses, depending on their profile, they might have a workforce that’s never experienced that before. But with freelancers, you’re able to bring in the expertise of people who have seen similar situations and can bring their experience to life with real answers. On a like-for-like basis, they’re often more experienced than they would be if they were full-time in a firm and can leverage that.”
Working with freelancers is also an opportunity for companies to diversify not just skills profiles, but personality ones too, bringing in a diversity of thought that’s equally as important as demographic diversity.
“People tend to hire people like themselves, but when you’re bringing in a freelancer, they often think in a slightly different way. We certainly have had clients where there’s internal politics at play, so they want someone to come in and shake things up a bit,” says Gregson.
“That’s not necessarily someone you might want to hire in a full-time role, but if there’s a clearly defined transformation that needs to happen, you might need it. Equally, you could want someone that placates everybody, who is very effective and collaborative. That diversity is much easier to tap into when you can bring people in more flexibly.”
How to get set for success
While Malt’s community comprises over 700,000 freelancers across Europe and the Middle East, bringing in a freelancer isn’t an overnight, magic solution for when there just aren’t enough hands on deck. Being held to unrealistic expectations, having a lack of clear and open communications and kicking off a new project with an inadequate briefing are the top three obstacles to a successful freelancer collaboration, Malt’s report reveals.
“Projects need to be set up for success. In the same way that you would onboard a permanent employee, you need to do the same with a freelancer - you need to make sure they have access to the right systems and equipment. You’d be surprised at how many businesses don’t do the basics. And when things go wrong, you can see there’s a clear reason,” says Gregson.
For Zoe Jones, with her years of board-level experience, she brings more than just marketing experience to a company, but business leadership, too. “I can be a bridge between different parts of a business. Then when I’ve worked with a business for some time and I’ve managed to get the marketing team to a certain point, then, potentially, I can take on a slightly different project that keeps my knowledge and career growing,” she says. “It’s about always staying fresh on business challenges, which is how you bring extra value.”
To find out more visit www.malt.uk/
