Freelance work has grown at an exponential rate in the last decade. Over a third of the working global population is now involved in some form of freelance work across a wide range of industries. Many workers relish this method of generating an income as it can give them greater flexibility in their working hours and the volume of work that they accept.

For businesses, hiring freelance workers helps to ensure that staffing costs are kept to an absolute minimum, as workers only receive tasks once they become available and no wages are paid when there is no work to complete. In contrast, more conventional models of work pay staff a set salary, regardless of the volume of work that is undertaken in each business period. This article focuses on two specific types of businesses that rely heavily on the use of a freelance workforce. 

Modern road haulage firms 

In the last decade, road haulage and shipping firms have started to rely more heavily on freelance workers. This is because firms can save money by not needing to invest in a fleet of haulage vehicles and rely on the freelancer to use their own vehicle. Today, shipping work is posted on online boards such as those that can be found at https://www.shiply.com/us/truck-loads. Freelance workers then bid for the order by supplying a competitive quote for the cost of shipping the goods. If they are successful, they are tasked with fulfilling the job and receive payment from the customer. In effect, the modern shipping company acts as an intermediary between the customer and the road haulage workers and can take a percentage of the total cost for advertising the job. This is a dramatic change to the structure of shipping and haulage firms that traditionally needed to rely on a large transport fleet and teams of employed drivers. It can also mean that this form of business has a lower start-up cost than it previously required and is now becoming popular with entrepreneurs who are seeking to diversify their business interests.

Web design

In 2023, a business website is regarded as being utterly essential for any organization, regardless of its sector of operations. Put simply, a business website is often one of the major touchpoints that link a business to its customers or client base. Whilst there are a range of web development applications (both free and paid for) that allow people with low levels of IT literacy or coding skills to develop their own websites, most businesses decide that they need a truly bespoke website. This is because many businesses will want their own unique branding, themes and logos on the site, and it can be difficult to achieve this by using the pre-set options that come with web development software solutions. As such, the demand for talented coders and web development professionals is high across many industries. Web design is ideally suited to the freelance model of work as web development generally has a distinct start and end point. After the website is fully operational, there is little need for freelance staff to continue working on it, and many companies will hire a small number of contracted employees to maintain and upgrade the site. 

• Business