Hajra Naz
Upwork, a working marketplace, will soon facilitate full-time hiring between job seekers and its client organizations, completely overhauling the way the business now does business.
The core principle of Upwork has always been to connect businesses with independent workers who can carry out particular projects or freelance for an exact amount of time. The business is now hoping to update the full-time job search strategy and attract additional users and workers to the platform.
CEO Hayden Brown tells Fast Company, “I’m really happy that now we’re offering all of our customers a way to actually get those full-time partnerships off the ground in a lot easier way than ever before.” With this arrangement, both sides are opting into a much more explicit contract-to-hire expectation by saying, “Hey, is this something where at the conclusion of a trial term, may I transition to payroll and a full-time position?
All of Upwork’s clients will be able to identify, screen, recruit, onboard, and pay workers from more than 180 countries thanks to its new business model. Upwork will make its payroll, compliance, and contract management capabilities more readily available to small and mid-size companies as part of the expanded offerings. Before committing to full-time work, both employers and employees can test out a position by beginning it as a contract-to-hire arrangement.
The company stated in a blog post announcing the expansion that full-time hiring, particularly on a global basis, is “an astronomically expensive bet, a heavy time investment, and a classification nightmare for employers” due to incomprehensibly complex international employment rules, procedural red tape and inefficiency, a lack of excellent personnel sources, and these factors.
Everyone involved must finally take a leap of faith in order to complete the process.
The initiatives might help Upwork enter a new era. Even while the company’s stock price has dropped by more than 40% since its October 2018 public debut, it is still up about 16% for the year as of Friday’s market closing.
According to Brown, if we consider issues like increasing customer lifetime value and retention, this gives us even another instrument.
More than 2 million users have indicated that they are interested in contract-to-hire opportunities since the firm began testing its full-time employment function. Apart from “many millions,” the company would not disclose the precise number of professionals using the platform at this time. Almost 40,000 new contract-to-hire positions have been introduced to the market since the year started.
Early in 2022, Upwork started working on developing new functionality. The reform comes as several well-known corporations reduce staff in preparation for a general financial downturn.
According to David Bottoms, General Manager of Upwork Marketplace, “you want to be incredibly smart about making sure you get the right people for a role.” And this is a solution that essentially enables you to test how the person fits the role before making them a full-time employee.
On the other hand, employees who have lost their jobs and are seeking new employment could use Upwork to see whether they are interested in both full-time and freelance work.
