The Era of the Independent Worker
Within the last few weeks new stories have been appearing about the temp workforce.
Jody Greenstone Miller and Matt Miller have a piece about the The Rise of the SuperTemp in the May issue of the Harvard Business Review. Ms. Greenstone Miller runs the Business Talent Group which places well-pedigreeed consultants in short term assignments. Matt Miller is best known as a commentator and writer.
In a recent Preoccupations in The New York Times Sunday Business section Alexandra Levit who identifies herself as a generational workplace consultant and author wrote about the new staying power of independent workers.
Certainly temporary work is not new. As the country emerged from the dot.com bust in 2004 I wrote a story in The New York Times entitled Your Next Boss Could Be a Temp. Then it was an emerging trend, now it is a universal one.
And, its a universal trend that has wide-ranging consequences for the independent workers and those who manage them. It will have implications for how managers are perceived, compensated and evaluated for promotions. In the coming weeks we’ll examine what those are and what they mean to companies, managers and the independent workers themselves.
