Could Hiring Gig Workers Cause Problems For Nonprofits?

Gig workers are being used more frequently to fill labour shortages, but research suggests that the employees are not well embedded into the company. This could be crucial within the nonprofit industry. Nonprofits may find that the organization's mission and the employees work may not align, causing potential problems within the organisation. 

• Companies are hiring more seasonal gig workers but aren't doing much to include them in company dialogue, according to a survey by workplace communication company Speakap. The company's poll of 500 HR executives at large organizations in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Spain and the Netherlands found that gig workers' temporary status has likely caused employers to exclude them from engagement efforts.

• Speakap also found that leaders, managers and operations employees perceive older seasonal gig workers as less engaged than younger gig workers, but that the former group does "nothing" to engage the latter. And although employees prefer a personal touch from employers, survey results show that organizations with many seasonal gig workers treat those workers less personally than organizations with fewer gig workers do. 

• "Seasonal hiring is increasing and the gig economy will keep growing, there's no doubt about that," Erwin Van Der Vlist, Speakap's co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. "By using seasonal workers as an example, we're now seeing that the way in which companies traditionally engage, motivate and speak with their employees is not evolving with or reaching this growing, often deskless, workforce."

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