Are tech freelancers required to replace employees?

With the global pandemic, recruitment criteria have evolved within companies. The use of telework for many employees has forced companies to manage hybrid teams with members working remotely. In addition, the number of business creations – and in particular of sole proprietorships – has been breaking all records for two years now.

IT consultant: freelancers on the rise compared to employees

In 2021, INSEE noted a 21% increase in business creation, including a 21.8% increase among micro-enterprises. The number of available freelancers is skyrocketing on the job market, especially in the IT sector (for information technology in English).

Tech freelancers are undeniably increasingly in demand by companies. But can we really speak of a gradual replacement of the tech employee by the tech freelancer?

Remote work gradually accepted by companies

This gradual acceptance of remote work has accelerated with the forced use of telework due to Covid-19. For many business leaders, the choice was no longer allowed to them with the application of the most restrictive health measures. Finally, this experience has had the merit of eliminating a number of prejudices about working from home.

For business leaders, they have seen that employees are – for the vast majority of them – as productive at home as within the company. For employees, they were able to get a more realistic idea of ​​telework with its advantages, but also with its constraints.

This telework revolution, used massively in recent months, has profoundly changed the appreciation of remote work within companies. By analogy, the development of teleworking among employees has also enabled better recognition of the services provided remotely by freelancers.

In the end, telework as well as the purchase of services from freelancers are gradually becoming part of companies, particularly for positions in the digital sector.

Employee or freelancer: which status is favored by young talents?

If in the past the Grail was to sign a CDI at the end of one’s studies, today young talents take their time to draw up their professional life project. Therefore, the CDI no longer appears as an obvious choice.

Among freelancers, the majority are active graduates who wish to exercise a professional activity without being constrained by an employment contract. The long-awaited CDI has therefore taken the lead in the wing in recent years and no longer necessarily represents the legal status envied by the most qualified.

This trend is found in particular among tech freelancers who have quickly grasped the interest of favoring an activity as an independent worker.

Indeed, the demand for services in the tech sector has only increased in recent years. The main attraction of the CDI as a stable job over the long term therefore loses much of its interest with these new digital professions which are not experiencing the crisis.

New working graduates today are attached to the freedom of being able to work when they want, where they want and with which company. For many, this freedom is priceless. In fact, many tech freelancers bluntly admit that they prefer to be self-employed despite numerous requests from employers offering them a permanent contract.

The lack of qualified employees forces companies to recruit freelancers

A study conducted in 2021 by a freelance platform caused a stir regarding the difficulties companies have in recruiting qualified employees. More than 500 HRDs, CEOs and managers were questioned between the beginning of July and mid-September 2021. 57% of these respondents answered that they had already recruited a freelancer after having had difficulty recruiting an employee for the same job.

Since the end of the containment measures, many employers wishing to resume full-time activity have made the same observation: many positions no longer find takers.

For many working people, confinement has caused a real questioning, both in terms of private and professional life. Lack of recognition, lack of flexibility, degraded working conditions: a number of workers have decided to reorient themselves professionally. For some, it is a question of changing sectors of activity. For others, the desire to create their own business and become their own boss has emerged.

Many sectors of activity are affected by this shortage of wage labour, in particular the digital sector.

In the end, it is mainly large companies that today recruit qualified employees in the IT sector. Indeed, these large groups can afford to offer attractive salaries with negotiable working conditions in order to attract and retain several profiles of graduates within their workforce (web developer, mobile developer, cybercrime expert, etc.) .

Medium and small businesses (SMEs and VSEs) have more difficulty recruiting tech employees. The main reasons for this are:

• working conditions and remuneration that are generally less attractive than those offered by large groups;
• often precarious employment contracts (CDD, temporary assignment, etc.) which attract few candidates from SMEs and VSEs with a temporary need to recruit a qualified IT professional.

In the end, most companies that recruited a freelancer for lack of a candidate for a salaried position quickly repeated the experience without it being a default choice. Companies are placing more and more trust in tech freelancers and prefer the purchase of services to the signing of a fixed-term contract or an interim contract.

Leaving your CDI to become a freelancer: a reality for the French?

The fear of end a CDI to embark on a full-time freelance activity was still well anchored in our society a few years ago. Today, the trend is radically reversed. More and more employees express the wish to leave their salaried job to start as a self-employed worker. Far from having grand projects and dreaming of one day being the CEO of a multinational, these working people dream above all of a better quality of life by establishing their own working conditions.

A survey conducted by the recruitment firm Cooptalis speaks volumes on this point. This survey was carried out in 2020 among 526 HRDs and CEOs of French companies of all sizes. Some 58% of companies surveyed said they had already received requests from their employees to work as freelancers.

According to this same study, 44% of companies increased their workforce of freelancers in 2021. For small companies with an activity in the IT sector, freelancers can represent up to 30% of their workforce. Companies are therefore gradually adapting to this change in status, favoring the services of freelancers for temporary assignments requiring a certain expertise.

Freelance platforms facilitate the employment of freelancers within companies

To meet a real need to organize the connection between business and freelance, several freelance platforms have emerged in recent years. The latter propose to highlight several profiles of self-employed workers on their site. Freelancers can thus gain visibility on one or more platforms. Companies can consult several freelance profiles, contact them, receive quotes, securely pay their service providers, etc.

Note that not all freelance platforms offer the same services. Some are content to facilitate contact between service providers and companies. Others offer more extensive support, with the signing of a service contract, a secure quote and invoicing service, etc.

To quickly find a competent and available service provider, companies can rely on certain platforms that have specialized in a particular sector of activity. Unsurprisingly, digital professions are among the most represented professional activities among freelancers (web developer, graphic designer, data analyst, etc.).

Companies looking for a freelance tech service provider can turn to the FreelanceRepublik platform. The tech freelancers put forward by this platform have been carefully selected, both in terms of their skills and their experience in their field of expertise. FreelanceRepublik is also responsible for securing the service with a legal contract, an estimate service and an invoicing service that meets the legal standards in force.

With the securing of purchases of services by freelance platforms, independent consultants are becoming permanently integrated into the workforce of companies. Far from taking the place of employees, freelancers represent for many companies the ideal solution for temporary positions requiring advanced expertise.