The People Shaping Your Business Aren't on Your Org Chart

I’ve worked closely with freelancers my whole career and somewhere along the way, they've stopped being a flexible resource and become a fundamental part of how creative businesses operate. Quite often they’ve been a key differentiator and many of the new creative businesses popping up are using freelance as their key USP.

Forecasts say that by 2030, freelancers could make up half of the creative workforce. In many agencies, they already account for a third of the people making the work, and plenty are operating at closer to 50%. Yet when we talk about talent, culture or diversity, we still tend to act as though permanent employees tell the whole story. They don't.

I've sat in countless conversations about hiring, succession planning, culture and representation. We pore over the make-up of our employee base. We analyse hiring pipelines. We publish diversity data. We ask ourselves whether we're building organisations that reflect the world around us. They're all important conversations, but increasingly, they only account for half the people making the work.

The freelancers coming into our businesses today aren't simply filling gaps or covering vacations. They're strategists, creatives, designers, producers and specialists. They're shaping ideas, influencing decisions and defining the quality of the work. If that's true - and I think it is - then surely we should care just as much about who they are.

Not just where they've worked, but the experiences they bring. What they're curious about. What references they have. What perspectives they challenge. What taste they contribute. Because that's the stuff that makes creative businesses better.

Your internal culture isn't something that's reserved for people with a permanent contract. I would argue freelancers need to understand your culture faster than anyone. They have to absorb how you think, work and what you stand for almost immediately if they're going to make a meaningful contribution.

Then there's the issue of junior roles disappearing - whether intentionally or not, we're creating a generation of emerging creative talent whose first experience of the creative industries is likely to be as freelancers. That's a very different career path to the one many of us entered.

Statistics also point to another challenge. Diverse communities remain underrepresented within the freelance creative workforce, despite the growing importance of freelance talent. If freelancers are going to represent half of our industry, that should concern all of us.

Because this isn't really about freelancers. It's about who gets to build a creative career. It's about whose perspectives shape the work. And it's about whether the way we measure progress has kept pace with the way our industry actually operates.

It’s important to take actionable steps now in pursuit of changing the dynamic.

Here’s a place to start…

Get the data - understand who your freelancers are? YunoJuno are great for this.
Are you at the mercy of the market or have you curated an internal bench of freelance talent? Time compromises quality and diversity - it needs to move from ad-hoc immediate needs, to always-on scouting and community building.

Put in the time to uncover the best representative talent - do you have the right balance of in-house recruiting versus external recruiting when it comes to scouting? Leaning too far either way limits your reach and capacity to truly uncover the best talent.

Does your onboarding work for everyone? What experience is given to your freelance talent to truly understand your culture and view of the world?

We're starting to see more organisations invest in freelancers. One being MAD Academy, an incredible initiative by Yellowzine - a creative platform and studio centralising African, Caribbean and Asian diaspora talent through publishing, exhibitions, events and workshops. MAD Academy is a programme for independent makers and doers to learn the important stuff that nobody tells you. It’s designed to address the barriers to entry and stability for freelancers in the creative industry and Uncommon couldn’t be prouder to be a founding partner of its first edition.

As Aisha Ayoade, founder of Yellowzine, says: "Too often, freelancers are brought in to fill a gap rather than valued for the personal experience and perspective they bring. The work expected of them is measured by output, not the unique input they can contribute."

If freelance talent is becoming such a significant part of our workforce, we can't keep treating it as someone else's responsibility. We need to think about freelance talent with the same intention we apply to permanent talent.

Because when half the people shaping your business sit outside your employee list, perhaps it's time to stop thinking of them as outside your business altogether.