Companies are increasingly calling on non-employees to complete their internal teams.. Pascal Ferron, president of Walter France and founder of the MonEntrepriZ platform, dedicated to self-employed people, explains why their mode of operation corresponds to the new trend of collaborative work in an ecosystem, and how businesses find many advantages there.
For several years, working methods are changing. What was only a simmer before the pandemic has blossomed during it, to become a major trend in the functioning of companies. How to explain this phenomenon ? Remember that self-employed status allows business creators to embark on an entrepreneurial adventure without the administrative burden of company status.. According to a recent study by recruitment firm Hays, the primary motivation, for 44% of them, is the organizational flexibility that this status allows. Then comes the remuneration, pour 38 % : indeed, equivalent budget that a company is ready to grant to carry out a mission, the “net” will be more important for the self-employed, its social charges being less heavy than those of an employee. In third position, for 29% of them, achieves work-life balance. Being self-employed allows you to organize yourself as you wish, by working just as much or more, but with increased efficiency in terms of time management, and above all great freedom of action, without hierarchical weight other than that assumed by customer relations. Or, the latter is more obvious when you are technically good and the quality is there, and the status is ultimately less risky than that of an employee, who can still end up at France Travail for reasons independent of the quality of their work (policy change, of strategy, end of project, refocusing of activity when it’s not closing…).
A status that has become largely legitimate
The craze for self-entrepreneurship continues in the long term : more than 4,3 million independent workers were counted in 2022, i.e. almost 50% increase in ten years, according to Urssaf, with an annual creation which is increasing and largely outweighs the number of business creations, all types combined, to records from year to year. If we go back even ten years, self-employed people were still considered by companies as a somewhat unreliable substitute for employees, even judged largely pejoratively and condescendingly by many, likening their work to “small jobs” with no future. This era is completely over. Today, most clients have integrated and normalized the use of self-entrepreneurship, who has earned his reputation in equity with fixed-term or temporary contracts thanks to reliable entrepreneurs, committed and competent, and especially thanks to the development of teleworking : operationally, the line is blurring between a teleworking employee and a self-employed person with no obligation to be present in the company.
Self-employed people, spearheads of collaborative work
Even more interesting is this underlying trend of working in an eco-system. The hierarchical organization leaves room for mobilizing the necessary skills within project teams : 47% of companies have already recruited external resources, free-lances, CDD, temporary workers. In this logic, self-employed people have their place and legitimacy, strong in the diversified experience also acquired from their other clients. For businesses, the main advantages of using external collaborators are flexibility and cost reduction, but also the best precision of the adequacy of the skills required at a given moment on a given subject. Occasional collaborators allow them to adapt the size of their teams and their skills according to their projects. More and more people are calling on self-employed people on a recurring basis..
Effective interventions, on time
Self-employed people do not only serve as an adjustment variable in terms of available resources. They have many other advantages. They are paid by time spent or by mission, only once the work is done. Suffice it to say that they have every interest in meeting deadlines and being efficient. Indeed, a manager does not ask himself the question of paying a salary at the end of the month, he will carefully study the invoice from his service provider : unproductive time is not tolerated. The self-employed person must prove the reality of the work carried out, its usefulness and the results produced. For Pascal Ferron, “in this logic, the self-employed, in his capacity as an external participant, maybe, within a team, one of the driving forces for moving the group forward and bringing projects to fruition. Leaders appreciate this culture of efficiency. » To date, according to the same Hays study, external collaborators still only represent less than 5% of their resources for 58% of companies. But for 21% of them, this share is already between 6 and 15%. There is no doubt that this trend of working in an ecosystem will continue to grow in the years to come., in the same vein as the increase in the number of self-employed.
