The Aftermath of the Great Resignation and role of Distributed Professionals

The Great Resignation is real. In February of this year, 4.4 million in the US quit or changed jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employers hired 6.7 million people that month while reporting 11.3 million job openings.

The problem is worse for employers centered on antiquated employment models. A growing number of professionals are entirely abandoning traditional employment roles.

According to a recent McKinsey report, 31 percent of employees who left their job in the past six months did so to start a new business. This study found that parents and minority women were comparatively more likely to leave to start a new business or to join the gig economy.

The aftermath is that HR teams are attempting to fill openings with fewer people wanting traditional roles. An economics degree is not needed to understand that with a dwindling supply of professional labor interested in traditional roles, the cost to acquire those professionals is skyrocketing.

Distributed Professionals offer a fast and easy way to fill gaps with experienced, hard-working people who want to work, just not under the same rules since the dawn of salaried employees.

Call them Distributed Professionals, Freelancers, Contractors, or Gig workers. The name doesn't matter. What matters is that more professionals are actively choosing to make their talents available on-demand to a single company or multiple organizations simultaneously. For this fast-growing group of professionals, working for themselves in this on-demand model far exceeds the benefits of traditional employment.

Why should employers consider this model? Distributed professionals get up to speed quickly, integrate with existing teams easily, and are primarily paid to deliver results.

Another benefit for both employers and distributed professionals is that distributed professionals cost significantly less than traditional employees since compensation is based on 1099s, not w2s.

Employers not actively considering adding on-demand distributed talent to their workforce will quickly be left behind.