Freelancing: A Roller Coaster of Freedom and Challenges
Freelancing is like tending to your own custom, blossoming garden. This article will play the role of your trusty gardening guide, offering you insights and reliable information, helping you maneuver through the fertile soils and occasional thorns of the freelancing world.
Introduction
Once upon a time, the vision of a career path was as narrow as a tightrope. People envisioned a traditional 9-5 job, a boss at the helm, and an office churning with fellow employees battling office politics. Enter the era of freelancing, analogous to a wide landscape filled with opportunities and challenges side by side.
Imagine a garden. In this garden, you are the gardener in complete control of planting expertise, choosing your flowers (clients), setting your timings (flexible hours), and determining your earnings. That's freelancing for you: it's like tending to your own custom, blossoming garden.
As much as we relish the aroma of self-chosen flowers, handed with the gardener's scissors to shape our freelancing garden comes the nitty-gritty of managing garden pests (taxes and health care) and dealing with the unpredictability of nature (income inconsistency).
This article will play the role of your trusty gardening guide, offering you insights and reliable information, helping you maneuver through the fertile soils and occasional thorns of the freelancing world.
A Leap into a Global Pool of Opportunities
A study by Akhmetshin et al. (2018) revealed a captivating facet of freelancing: the potential to work for organisations around the world. Yes, freelancing is like acquiring a 'Golden Ticket' to global opportunities. The study unfolded like an unraveling spool, showing how being a freelancer, you become your own boss, responsible for your salary and progress.
Like a gardener deciding the layout and type of plants in their garden, freelancers get to set their work schedules and area of expertise. It aligns with Meager (2015)'s finding where freelancing accounted for higher job quality and satisfaction compared to traditional employment. However, even the rosiest gardens have their thorns.
Sprouting Challenges in the Freelancing Garden
Think about a squirrel nibbling on your prized garden bulbs or unseasonal rainfall wreaking havoc on your carefully planned layout. Freelancing, too, brings its share of squirrels and unexpected storms. One literature study equated freelancers with a part of an 'unregulated secondary labor market' (Jacobs et al., 2019), bringing to the forefront the issue of job insecurity.
Accompanying this uncertainty is the erratic rain of timely payments from your clients. Often, freelancers face delayed income, leading to unpredictable financial periods, akin to an unanticipated drought after seeding new blooms. Then comes the lack of guaranteed pensions, leave, health insurance, and not to mention, the absence of a stability net during precarious unemployment periods.
An interesting analogy drawn by Akhmetshin (2018) is that of freelancers having to self-promote and build their customer base. For some, this might be an exciting challenge, signaling a productive season for their flowering freelancing garden. Yet for others, it's like a creeping vine, slowing down the growth and taking unnecessary energy.
The Tale of Two Freelancers
In the YouTube video "The Benefits and Challenges of Freelancing," the 'Remote Work Queen' Libria Jones brought to life a story of a freelancer who decided to specialize in graphic design using Canva. This freelancer relished the diverse freedom freelancing offers and saw it as a means to dig broad and deep. Yet, she also agreed with Kitching & Smallbone's (2012) findings that freelancing often constitutes harder work and dissatisfaction due to lack of job security.
Contrastingly, another freelancer from Industrial Relations could be better off as a contract employee despite the many freedoms in freelancing (Jacobs et al., 2019). The contrasting experiences of these two freelancers showcase freelancing's exciting yet risky dichotomy.
Planting the Seeds of Decent Work
Among the stories and stats, let's remember that freelancing is not just a matter of personal or financial choice. It embodies a larger societal and economic dynamic. Reflecting on the International Labour Organization's goal of decent work and the role of HR in including freelancers, we see a broader landscape - of equality, safety, fair income, and dignified work conditions.
In this garden where freelancers sow their skills and reap their earnings, HR practices and policies are the nourishing sun and rain needed for growth. Incorporating freelancers in these systems can help create an environment for decent work to flourish, just as a well-tended garden thrives.
The world of freelancing is an adventure – a roll-coaster ride filled with highs and lows. Stepping into the freelancing garden, donning the gardener's hat, one must remember the adage "As you sow, so shall you reap." Are you ready for your gardening adventure?
