The Gig Economy: What It Means for eLearning

“Freelancing is becoming amore prevalent, viable option for workers—a trend that spans across borders,industries, and occupations.” That’s according to Freelancing in America: 2015, a study commissioned by the Freelancers Union andUpwork.

The study shows that 54 millionAmericans—34 percent of US workers—are currently working as freelancers. That’sup 700,000 from the previous year.

And according to research from Field Nation, 60 percent of companies plan to hire morefreelancers than full-time employees by 2020.

If these statistics areanything to go by, it looks like the freelance economy is growing from strengthto strength.

Rapid developments intechnology—in terms of Internet bandwidth, hardware, software, and apps—havemade it very easy for people to work remotely and to set up and run businessesat a low cost. And platforms such as Uber, TaskRabbit, and Upwork have providedthe mechanism by which freelancers can find work.

These trends are alsoshaping corporate learning. According to industry analyst Technavio, the corporate eLearningmarket will be worth $31 billion by 2020. This growth will be driven by organizationspromoting self-paced learning among employees.

These developments looklike great news for eLearning professionals, but they are only one part of thestory. Many organizations have used eLearning to cut training costs and toscale learning. For this reason, compliance training has been a huge successstory.

But cost cutting and ashift toward more agile ways of delivering learning have seen organizationsreduce the size of learning and development (L&D) teams. Bringing inresources at the point of need is becoming a business imperative. This meanseLearning becomes more of an outsourced function. In recent years, eLearningand learning technology teams have been hit particularly hard across thepublic, private, and nonprofit sectors.

So what does this mean forfreelance eLearning professionals?

First, the number offreelance eLearning professionals is growing. Those who are moving intoeLearning and learning-technology freelancing have typically held permanentroles such as instructional design (eLearning), eLearning designers, eLearning teamleaders, or design leads.

Second, theseprofessionals are bringing with them a wide variety of skills, such as:

• Defining learning and performance needs
• High-level design skills
• Deep understanding of authoring tools
• Product development including storyboarding,building, graphics, voice-over, and assessment
• Project management skills
• Evaluation skills

Third, clients are lookingto fulfill discrete learning projects. These reflect organizations’ need torespond quickly to business needs and the fact that they are increasingly lookingto outsource their eLearning development. The days of designing and implementingan eLearning program over 12 months are long gone, and so is the need to employan in-house team to deliver it.

Data from my platform, JamPan eLearning Services, shows that organizations are often looking foralternatives to traditional eLearning, so freelancers must stay on top of theirgame and ensure they develop their skill sets accordingly. Emerging skillsinclude animation, video, and games.

The good news for freelancersis that there is an increased demand for freelance eLearning skills. And fororganizations, a wealth of eLearning skills is now easier to access than everbefore.

The gig economy puts theonus on organizations to understand when to use a freelancer and why. It alsoputs the onus on freelancers to continually develop their skills.

The eLearning freelancing marketis only going to get bigger, so make sure you are well placed to take advantageof it. 

References

Field Nation and Future Workplace. TheGig Economy Study.WorkplaceTrends.com. 3 May 2016.
https://workplacetrends.com/the-gig-economy-study/

Freelancers Union and Upwork. Freelancingin America: 2015.
https://fu-web-storage-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/content/filer_public/59/e7/59e70be1-5730-4db8-919f-1d9b5024f939/survey_2015.pdf

Technavio. “Global Corporate E-learning Market to Reachover USD 31 Billion by 2020, says Technavio.” Yahoo! Finance. 29 January 2016.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/global-corporate-e-learning-market-164000323.html