Work was ripe for disruption long before 2020. The fundamental structure of work, and the ways we work, haven’t kept pace with technology, with corporate needs to access the right talent at the right time, or with workers’ preferences for greater flexibility and control.

Now that it’s been disrupted – now that how and where and when we work has all fundamentally changed – we aren’t likely to revert to the way we used to work. There is no return to normal.

Abandoning the idea that we’re going back, and backwards, to our old working lives opens up a whole new set of possibilities and opportunities about ways to move forward. It offers us the chance to rethink what work will look like, not return to what it was.

Rethinking Work

Companies have traditionally organized the work they need to get done into full-time jobs, which they then fill with full-time employees. Full-time jobs aren’t going away, but they are being supplemented by a more flexible, dynamic approach to structuring work into projects, assignments, and tasks.

The world, the economic environment, and the demands placed on your company are all changing in unexpected ways. The difference between succeeding or failing to manage through a crisis can depend on your ability to add staff to critical functions, and access the exact skills and experience needed to respond to a changed business environment.

Gig workers can help your company weather this crisis by providing flexibility and resilience to your workforce. Maybe you need a skilled writer, blogger or technician to move a project forward or be “on the ground” in a specific geographic market. By using independent workers, you can respond to changing demands for specific skills, experience, or expertise, when and where you need them.

Independent workers bring other benefits to companies: they can increase the productivity of the workforce and support a high-performance culture. Companies that embrace the Gig Economy – made up of consultants, independent contractors, freelancers, and on-demand workers – will have a competitive advantage, in both good times and bad, over companies that don’t.