Technological advances have helped create the trend towards flexibility in the workplace. The traditional 9-5 job and the long commute it sometimes entails is slowly becoming a thing of the past.

More companies are engaging flexible resources to meet business demands, offering work perks like flexible schedules and the ability to work from home. This structure is an active practice worldwide that is quickly being adopted in the UAE as businesses and employees seek a mutually beneficial balance between flexibility and productivity.

This means more options in terms of place, time or patterns of work. It can also mean new approaches to work, including job sharing, new workspaces and business structure.

Today an increasing number of businesses are enabling their staff with flexible schedules. Cloud-based technology has enabled an increased collaboration with communication tools, software, apps providing businesses with access to documents and databases from anywhere. Instant messaging is another tool that is now becoming more common as organisations widen their applicant pool to candidates across the world.

These advances enable flexibility to work from almost anywhere at any time, making flexible working easier than ever before.

A recent report by RICS surveying more than 500 Middle East employees, stated that 75 per cent needed more flexibility in their working environment to be more productive. The findings provide a distinctive insight about the impact the physical environment has on staff productivity.

In the US, contingency workers represent 34 per cent or the total workforce which contributes $715 billion to the economy. In the UK, the contingency workforce contributes $32 billion to the economy. Freelance numbers have increased by 45 34 per cent from just under 6.2 million to 8.9 million in Europe, making them the fastest growing group in the EU labour market.

While there are currently no solid figures available for the UAE, the outlook is a positive one with plenty of opportunity. Local companies across the region are increasingly turning to freelancers to keep costs in check.

Businesses that already engage with freelancers are doing so for short-term support, which is where they will see the biggest benefits. No lengthy interview processes, no visa costs, no medical insurance costs and access to scalable resources.

Experts who were surveyed quoted flexibility as being the number one advantage for them working freelance. Being able to choose the projects and the companies they work with is key as well as being able to fit work around their own schedule. This was closely followed by being able to work with a range of companies.

The biggest disadvantage of working as a freelancer was the uncertainty of winning the next project and being able to maintain a constant flow of work.

For years, HR professionals have cited the global skills shortage as one of their biggest challenges when looking for the right people for their business. Yet many highly skilled and qualified individuals complain about the lack of opportunity available. Companies and potential employees have to look at overcoming this issue by harnessing the power of technology and opening their mind to working in a more modern and flexible way. Why can’t an Abu Dhabi-based consultancy be working with a strategy expert based in Egypt? Why can’t a London-based luxury brand business be working with a Dubai-based Marketing & Branding expert? In the future it’s going to be more about what someone does and less about from where they do it. Working this way will help turn a local talent pool into a potentially global talent pool.

Are we ready for this type of change? Well, according to a report published by PWC “The Future of Work — A journey to 2022”, “2 out of 5 people around the world believe that traditional employment won’t be around in the future and instead people will have their own brands and sell their skills to those that need them”.

This is already happening. Experts have decided to leave the somewhat safe haven of full-time permanent employment and instead do what they do best and put themselves out there as an expert, ready to provide their expertise to companies as and when needed.

The MGI in its “A labour market that works” report talks about how companies of the future will consist of a core team of staff, a minimum spine of capabilities, with the remainder of the workforce being made up of flexible resources. They will call on experts to provide their skills and services as and when required.

This will enable them to better manage their headcount and their budgets whilst remaining lean and able to scale up or down to meet work demands. With more companies in the UAE having to make redundancies each week, perhaps the sooner this model is adopted locally the better.

The writer is General Manager of Taskgate.