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Motivating Employees in The Gig Economy: Work", As Opposed To Permanent And/or Full-Time Employment. Popular Examples

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Azka Javed

This document discusses motivating employees in the gig economy. It begins by defining the gig economy as involving short-term contracts and freelance work rather than permanent jobs. While the gig economy is touted as providing flexibility, the reality is more precarious for many workers who are motivated by needing work rather than autonomy. The document then reviews theories of employee motivation before examining the paradox that while the gig economy aims to provide intrinsic motivators, many gig workers lack skills and stability and are primarily motivated by needing to find work. It concludes that greater nuance is needed to understand motivation for different types of gig workers.

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Motivating Employees in The Gig Economy: Work", As Opposed To Permanent And/or Full-Time Employment. Popular Examples

Uploaded by

Azka Javed
22 views3 pages
This document discusses motivating employees in the gig economy. It begins by defining the gig economy as involving short-term contracts and freelance work rather than permanent jobs. While the gig economy is touted as providing flexibility, the reality is more precarious for many workers who are motivated by needing work rather than autonomy. The document then reviews theories of employee motivation before examining the paradox that while the gig economy aims to provide intrinsic motivators, many gig workers lack skills and stability and are primarily motivated by needing to find work. It concludes that greater nuance is needed to understand motivation for different types of gig workers.

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This document discusses motivating employees in the gig economy. It begins by defining the gig economy as involving short-term contracts and freelance work rather than permanent jobs. While the gig economy is touted as providing flexibility, the reality is more precarious for many workers who are motivated by needing work rather than autonomy. The document then reviews theories of employee motivation before examining the paradox that while the gig economy aims to provide intrinsic motivators, many gig workers lack skills and stability and are primarily motivated by needing to find work. It concludes that greater nuance is needed to understand motivation for different types of gig workers.

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© All Rights Reserved
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22 views3 pages

Motivating Employees in The Gig Economy: Work", As Opposed To Permanent And/or Full-Time Employment. Popular Examples

Uploaded by

Azka Javed
This document discusses motivating employees in the gig economy. It begins by defining the gig economy as involving short-term contracts and freelance work rather than permanent jobs. While the gig economy is touted as providing flexibility, the reality is more precarious for many workers who are motivated by needing work rather than autonomy. The document then reviews theories of employee motivation before examining the paradox that while the gig economy aims to provide intrinsic motivators, many gig workers lack skills and stability and are primarily motivated by needing to find work. It concludes that greater nuance is needed to understand motivation for different types of gig workers.

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MOTIVATING EMPLOYEES IN THE GIG ECONOMY

Introduction

Friedman (2014) comments that the ‘gig economy’ is a term that has attracted
increasing attention in recent years, particularly so in light of a number of high-profile
legal cases seeking to define precisely what working in ‘the gig economy’ means. A
simple definition is offered by Scheiber (2015, p.12) suggesting that the gig economy is
“a labour market characterised by the prevalence of short-term contracts and/or freelance
work”, as opposed to permanent and/or full-time employment. Popular examples
include couriers and agency workers, and according to a study commissioned by the UK
Government (Gov.uk, 2018) approximately 2.8 million people in the UK – equivalent to
4.4% of the workforce - are currently directly employed in such work, either on a part
time or full-time equivalent basis.

At face value, the gig economy has been popularised as a flexible working environment,
ideal for those employees seeking freedom and autonomy in their working conditions
(Aloisi, 2015). Aloisi (2015) also notes, however, that the reality is rather more
complicated, as whilst on the one hand the advantages of a gig economy would indeed
be aligned with known employee motivational levers, in practice as the recent legal
cases have shown, the gig economy is in fact far more precarious for many, meaning
that they are not motivated by freedom and autonomy, but instead by ‘hard’ factors
such as fear of not being offered more work (Manyika et al., 2016). This creates a
paradox within Human Resource Management (HRM) literature. This essay seeks to
shine a spotlight on this paradox, unpacking the contradictions and tensions in the
literature and empirical evidence to understand how employees in the gig economy are
motivated.

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The Fundamentals of Employee Motivation

The fundamental premise of employee motivation is grounded in the widely recognised


work of Abraham Maslow (1943) and his Hierarchy of Human Needs. In essence, Maslow
established that grounding needs of safety and shelter must be the foundation of more
advanced principles of human and employee motivation, as without basic needs being
satisfied, people cannot direct their attention towards more sophisticated motivational
principles. However, assuming such basic needs are satisfied, Maslow and later a clutch
of other famous scholars such as McGregor (1960), Vroom (1964), Hertzberg (1968), and
Hackman and Oldham (1976) examined various facets of employee motivation reaching
broadly similar conclusions that people are motivated when they are appropriately
rewarded and recognised for the work that they have undertaken. The detail of these
various motivational theories has been carried forward to the present day and the
widely established notions that the most effective way to motivate employees is via
‘intrinsic’ motivational levers (Lazaroiu, 2015). These include amongst others,
recognition, personal autonomy, intellectually stimulating work, and flexibility to
manage workload.

On paper, the gig economy offers all of these intrinsic levers, and as explained by Fernet
et al., (2017), such intrinsic levers are regularly espoused as being one of the main
reasons that employees elect to join the gig economy. The same scholars recognise that
organisations benefit from a flexible labour workforce meaning that they are not
carrying one of the most expensive overheads – employees - on the profit and loss
account, but much greater attention is always directed towards the many perceived
‘benefits’ to employees (Kanfer et al., 2017). Certainly, some employees within the gig
economy do benefit from flexible, autonomy and intellectual stimulating work. Such
employees however, are typically highly skilled, in possession of valuable knowledge or
experience, and also possessed of a network of professional contacts enabling them to
find such work on an ongoing basis (Steinberger, 2017). For employees within the gig
economy lacking these transferable skills, their motivational levers are likely to be very
different, much more towards the lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy. In plain terms, they
work in precarious ‘gig economy’ employment, because there are no viable alternatives
and they have no certainty of any other form of employment (Manyika et al., 2016). This
represents the paradox of the gig economy, suggesting that much greater nuance and
more careful interpretation of motivation within this context is necessary.

The Paradox of the Gig Economy

The Taylor Review of 2017 sought to better understand the paradox of the gig
economy, defining and examining what is understood to be ‘good’ work, that is to say
intellectually and financially rewarding employment which is stable leading to
productive and ultimately ‘healthier and happier citizens’ (Taylor Review, 2017). There is
a wider case for ‘good work’ when looking beyond hard financial measures, as
employees in jobs that they enjoy and in which they feel comfortable and confident are
more productive and creative. Often, according to Milkman and Ott (2014), when people
perceive that there is value and meaning in their work then they are more engaged, and
happy and healthy employees are also less reliant on state support, suffer less ill-health,
and ultimately work more. From a governmental perspective, this also offers the benefit
of increased tax receipts, meaning that from all viewpoints, ‘good’ work is to be actively
sought.

The assumed converse ‘bad work’ is the rather one-sided relationship crystallised at the
lower end of the gig economy, with those employees lacking the skills to negotiate
longer term contracts, and instead finding themselves waiting desperately to hear if they
will be working that day (Aloisi, 2015). This exploitative dynamic is demoralising and
ultimately counter-productive, offering much greater benefits to the employer than the
employee. Whilst UK employment levels may be at some of the highest levels for
decades (Gov.uk, 2018), this topline figure masks a much higher proportion of
precarious or ‘bad work’ with all of the associated disadvantages that this brings. As
prosaically expressed by Behr (2017, p.1), it leaves more than 1.6 million people of
working age in the UK with the choice of “crap job or no job”. As Behr (2017, p.1) goes
on to note, “not a very enticing choice”, but it is a reality of the gig economy for many.

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