Tag: gig economy

Should you go freelance?

With industries announcing hiring freezes and the work-from-home movement in full swing working in the gig economy is hotter than ever. However, if you consider taking on freelance work either full-time or as a side gig, you may need help with where to start.
First of all, you must take a step back and consider how you work and whether your preexisting work habits would coincide with the freelance culture:
Ask Yourself these questions.

If you concluded that yes, you are the correct type of person to go solo, then read on the freelancer starter checklist.
Before taking the plunge, you should get your finances in order. Start by making a budget to ensure you put money aside as a safety net when you first start. You will also need to set up a financial bookkeeping system to have a strategy for organization from the outset, which goes hand in hand with opening a business bank account to keep track of incoming and outgoing payments specific to your business.

To prepare yourself for success, create a schedule and stick to it. Rookie mistakes include burning out from working too much or sidetracked by less important tasks.

A social presence is vital for any freelancer as it’s how you promote yourself. Use social media as a tool to promote your work as well as build connections. Having potential clients lined up will make the transition easier, so along with Instagram, make sure your Upwork and other gig sites are up and running and you have begun reaching out. For Networking, Linkedin is a no-brainer.

Fill your toolbox with everything you need to succeed. Freelancing is a one-person show, so you must cover all your bases. Do you need Adobe Creative Suite? Canva? Whatever programming it is, get your ducks in a row.

Create yourself a workspace or decide upon a public one. In metropolitan areas, you can throw a rock and hit a WeWork. Since the pandemic, several other options for co-working spaces have arisen, but if you plan to work from home, creating a quiet, organized, designated area for you to be productive will be critical to your success.

Lastly, When you decide to leave your corporate 9-5, you’re also preceding your employer-sponsored benefits. With gethealthee.com, you can access affordable health benefits with no employer sponsor and no open enrollment, meaning you pay on a monthly or quarterly basis and can hop on or off anytime, making it the ideal platform for freelancers to shop for coverage. Before becoming a full-time freelancer, you should schedule a call with a HealthEE advisor to deduce the best range.

Sources:

Thinking of going freelance? Here’s 8 things you should consider

 

 

Are you presenting HealthEE by HBG as a retain and attract tool? You should be.

The workforce is reshuffling. There is no doubt about it. Our new normal has sparked change in every industry universally. Employees want more, more flexibility, more balance, more control, just more. Whether they find that sense of more in another role or as a gig worker or freelancer, many are still trying to find the answer to their employment desires. According to the US Chamber of Commerce, the food and hospitality industries are among the most struggling industries to retain workers. In these sectors, the bulk of sales happen to the end consumer through the part-time workers, so they must be trained and controlled, armed with the knowledge to close the deal. No one can deny the importance of the customer experience. It is a heavyweight, especially considering those expected to hold it often feel the least appreciated. Traditionally the part-time worker is provided a different cachet than the corporate counterparts, no PTO, no benefits, and poor hours during the holidays while the rest of us are home with our families. While this model has worked in the past, the post covid employee isn’t biting in the same way anymore to attract and retain the necessary talent to close the sales in the store and behind the counter.
You can find the usual retention techniques across this platform and several others, including the shared working community; WeWork posted an article highlighting that retention means work-life balance, hiring good leaders, and building good teams, but how does one attract good leaders and sound teams? Businesses must convey a value matching the ideals of the potential hires they seek. Now while the most obvious of the bunch is providing employees with the ability to work from home, this is only an option for some industries. An employee can’t show a guest to their room or take a customer’s order from their home. However, there are other ways employers can give potential employees a sense of control and empowerment. Research from job boards Indeed and Glassdoor finds benefits and flexibility remain essential to attract talent. For the businesses that can’t afford to offer higher pay and can’t provide their employees a work-from-home option, how does offering the part-time workforce affordable benefits at no cost to the employer sound? Here is where Healthy Business Group steps in; their flagship product, HealthEE by HBG, is the online benefits solution for employers to offer employees at no cost to the employer, where employees can take control of their benefits and can choose to have more of what they need and less of what they don’t, now that’s an incentive.

Sources

https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/how-to-retain-an-employeehttps://www.uschamber.com/workforce/understanding-americas-labor-shortage-the-most-impacted-industrieshttps://www.zippia.com/advice/great-resignation-statistics/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/12/business/economy/labor-participation-covid.htmlhttps://www.hrmorning.com/news/benefits-key-role/https://www.fm-magazine.com/news/2022/dec/benefits-flexibility-attract-talent-report-finds.htmlhttps://www.wework.com/ideas/professional-development/management-leadership/employee-retention-what-it-is-best-strategies-and-more’

Do you know what you’re missing from your book of business?

It is difficult to discuss the current state of affairs for any industry without returning to the long-lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, so bear with us. Among the challenges and work-from-home realizations, there were some among us not afforded the luxury of WFH. Essential workers, we dubbed them, the (in many cases) part-time workers keeping our supermarkets, delivery services, transportation, and even hospitals functioning. Even now, as we have returned to a sense of normalcy, WFH is still prevalent, and part time employees are still on the front lines. They form relationships with a brand’s consumers, the ones who are the faces of a company day in and day out. And yet they are missing from most brokers’ books of business. Why? 

Have we not experienced the vitality of the part-time worker these past few years? And of course we are also amidst a movement known as the great resignation, meaning companies need to do more to retain their employees. Covid-19 showed us how much we need part-time workers, but it also gave those workers every reason to want to quit their jobs. It’s up to employers now to find new solutions to hold fast to those employees and find new ones in a time where there are a plentiful number of WFH postings.

The pandemic has left brokers with new opportunities. Where traditionally, a broker’s book of business has not included the part-time employee, now they can. Not only is this a new market for brokers, but it also provides tangible value to the business owners. Part-time employees are the backbone of companies, and providing possible and accessible benefits will up current retention and incentivize new employees alike.

The Great Resignation?

The Great Resignation was a rumbling that began amid the pandemic and has grown exponentially. With millions of people resigning from their jobs and opting into the gig economy, where they can work from home, have more say over their worth, and be in control of their work-life balance. I sat with our co-founder Christian Stearns to discuss this phenomenon and what it means for business owners and employers.

Christian explained that he considers the great resignation a misnomer and that he feels this phenomenon should be called the Great Realignment, as it’s more than people just leaving their jobs. Its employees realizing and acting upon what they need to have a high quality of life. Amidst the pandemic, we as a society discovered we can measurably work from home, and in eliminating the time of a commute and the physical distance between the office and your family, it’s not surprising many do not want to go back to the old way of business, in the office, 9-5. Thus employees left in search of employers willing to provide them with the lifestyles they became accustomed to during the pandemic. 

Many of you experienced this first hand, so I asked Christian how we could take this sour realignment and make sweet lemonade. His response was for business owners and employers to take a step back, recognize the need to give to get, the need for flexibility and that employment is not the one-way street it may have once been. More than flexibility, employers need to provide value to their employees. In this new wave with a booming gig economy where many work multiple part-time gigs or freelance for many companies providing access to benefits can be the differentiator. 

As much as the move to the gig economy has given employees a new kind of freedom, in many ways, it has also created a massive vulnerability as part-time, and contract workers seldom qualify for benefits and insurance coverage. Filling this gap and covering this vulnerability can make all the difference when retaining talent, whether in the form of contract workers or even your full-time staff. The workforce is full of under-benefitted, and downright un benefited workers. The truth is that health workers lead to a healthy business, and we help make employees HealthEE. 

The Creator Economy AKA the Everyone Economy

 Over the last 20 years, how we consume entertainment and media has drastically changed. Back in the day, we had accepted that the Marilyn Monroes and Elizabeth Taylors of the world were of a different species, unattainable in lifestyle, image, and wealth, only existing behind the gates of MGM to a world now where anyone and everyone with a smartphone can attain status. While I wouldn’t dream of comparing the likes of Emma Chamberlin to Marilyn Monroe, my point is concerning influence and wealth. Many dismiss the concept of content creating or influencing (depending on your audience) as a genuine career. Still, you have to consider the undeniable fact that Miss Chamberlin, at the age of 19, bought herself her first home in West Hollywood for 3.9 Million dollars. Now, of course, Emma Chamberlain is a success story at the most extreme side of the creator economy spectrum, but she is not the only one living on her content creation. 

Content creation refers to the work used to hopefully sway viewers to embrace a trend or purchase a product. There are many kinds of content creators, some of which, like Emma, are personalities themselves influencing viewers because they want to be like her. Others, for example, make UGC or user-generated content that brands can use for “organic” appearance advertisements. While to make UGC, you may be an influencer in your own right; you are more likely just making clean content that marketers hope looks like a natural person using and praising their product. Of course, there is also the degree of influence to consider. With this desire to appear honest and real many marketers look to smaller accounts, dubbed “micro-influencers,” to promote their products. If you haven’t guessed it by now, what makes the creator economy go round is the social media platforms they frequent but more so the brands sending them products and writing checks. Now to be clear, it isn’t all rainbows and sunshine. A tiny portion of the influencer economy is making the big bucks, but just enough people do that everyone else believes they can. A survey by the Morning Consult in 2020 of 2,000 13-38 year-olds found that 54% of respondents wanted to be an influencer, and 86% would be willing to post sponsored content. In other words, the influencer economy isn’t going anywhere. Such a high demand for this career can inspire anyone looking to join in, as well as inform company owners who are either hesitant about the whole debacle or worried they waited too long to jump on the bandwagon. There are many nuances to the creator economy that may feel intimidating to utilize from the outside looking in. Still, you can better understand the driving forces behind many of today’s purchasers by understanding the opportunity of a micro-influencer as a trusted messenger for your product or service. Many are influenced to purchase products or hope to influence others by buying products. Either side of the coin puts anyone unwilling to accept and use the creator economy to their benefit at a severe disadvantage in today’s consumer climate.