A lot of things about the way we work have changed over the past year. The pandemic has caused workers to reconsider their priorities, creating a mass exodus of full-time employees. A shortage of top talent has left businesses to reconsider the traditional employment structure. As a result, more businesses are turning to freelancers to fill these gaps. By working with a freelancer who is an expert in a certain field, businesses can flexibly assign projects only when and where they are needed.
This shift is well underway with 80 percent of U.S. companies stating that they currently rely on a mix of freelance and full-time workers. While the same amount of U.S. businesses plan to expand their use of freelancers in the next few years. This shift is great news for workers who are looking for flexibility. However, many of these businesses aren’t equipped to handle this shift. In fact, only 17 percent of companies reported having the infrastructure necessary to enable flexible, freelancer payments. That is a huge problem for growing businesses.
Freelancers currently have a lot of payment pain
Onboarding, classifying, and paying freelancers looks a lot different than full-time employees. Those who choose the freelancing lifestyle do so to have more flexibility in when and where they work. This need for flexibility also extends to payments. Unfortunately, most companies have a bad track record when it comes to paying freelancers. 71% of freelancers have dealt with clients paying them late or not at all and 84% of freelancers would work more often if they were paid faster.
While freelancer payment issues existed long before the pandemic, the recent surge in flexible, remote work has highlighted this pain point for businesses. As more companies turn to freelancers to fill in the gaps, they need to figure out a way to streamline the onboarding and payment process. Late or incomplete payments can be financially devastating to freelancers and cause legal trouble for your business. If you plan to work with freelancers, you need to streamline how these freelancers are classified and paid.
Tap into a freelancer payments platform
Rather than try and have an internal HR and payroll department try to tackle freelancer onboarding and payments, companies should outsource this work to freelancer specialists. A freelancer payments platform makes sure that these workers are paid swiftly and securely. Freelancers also need to be classified based on what type of job they do, how often they will do it, and if that work is vital to your business. Make sure you chose to work with a platform that not only issues flexible payments but will make sure every freelancer is correctly classified as 1099 or W2.
Having a flexible, secure way to pay your freelancers means that you can attract and retain the best talent. Consider that 73% of freelance employees have said they would leave their current role for a better payment experience. This means that companies competing for freelancers’ attention must make sure they can accommodate these flexible payment needs.
Ready to learn more about how AllWork can help you classify, onboard, manage, and pay your freelancers? Schedule a demo of our platform here.
