Gig Workers - Publications - Faculty & Research

20 Nov 2024
Podcast

Beyond exit interviews: Knowing why workers quit makes for better job matches

Thinking of employees as 'hiring' their jobs opens the way to a detailed analysis of worker motivations, frustrations, and long-term goals, which can reduce costly turnover and make career development a collaborative process. Harvard Business School professor Ethan... View Details

November–December 2020
Article

Rethinking the On-Demand Workforce

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman, Allison Bailey and Nithya Vaduganathan

As companies struggle with chronic skills shortages and changing labor demographics, a new generation of talent platforms, offering on-demand access to highly trained workers, has begun to help. These platforms include marketplaces for premium expertise (such as Toptal... View Details

Keywords: Talent Acquisition; Platforms; Skilled Labor Recruitment; Gig Economy; Talent and Talent Management; Selection and Staffing; Internet and the Web; Strategy; Digital Platforms

Citation

Find at Harvard

31 Jan 2021
News

Tips on Going Freelance During the Covid-19 Pandemic

17 Nov 2020
Research & Ideas

Why a Blended Workforce May Be Key to Lasting Competitive Advantage

approach. Getting full value from highly skilled gig workers requires more than simply hiring them. Few companies have developed cultures that accommodate transient, outside talent; few managers are adept at... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph B. Fuller

19 Feb 2020
News

Breaking the Salary Sharing Taboo

25 Feb 2020
News

Q&A: William Kerr and Joseph Fuller

April 2019 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Handy: The Future of Work? (A)

By: Nien-hê Hsieh and Kieron Stopforth

Witnessing numerous lawsuits alleging that online platform companies misclassified workers as contractors when they were actually employees, Handy’s founders faced a series of decisions. Handy was an online platform business that enabled customers to book appointments... View Details

Keywords: Employment; Working Conditions; Entrepreneurship; Compensation and Benefits; Internet and the Web; Ethics; Fairness; Service Industry; United States

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About the Project - Managing the Future of Work

other advanced and emerging economies: Technology trends like automation and artificial intelligence Contingent workforces and the gig economy Workforce demographics and the “care economy” The middle-skills gap and View Details

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Building the On-Demand Workforce - Managing the Future of Work

Angeles Times Why Companies and Skilled Workers Are Turning to On-Demand Work Joseph Fuller and Allison Bailey 24 Nov 2020 | HBR IdeaCast Why a Blended Workforce May Be Key to Lasting Competitive Advantage Joseph B. Fuller 17 Nov 2020 |... View Details

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Healthy Outcomes - Managing the Future of Work

Bundle Podcast Why Companies and Skilled Workers Are Turning to On-Demand Work Joseph Fuller and Allison Bailey 24 Nov 2020 | HBR IdeaCast Why a Blended Workforce May Be Key to Lasting Competitive Advantage Joseph B. Fuller 17 Nov 2020 |... View Details

07 Jul 2019
HBS Case

Walmart's Workforce of the Future

private employer in the United States, with 1.5 million workers (2.2 million worldwide). But that size and dominance doesn’t make Walmart immune to pressures faced by any other retail operation. In the second-year Harvard Business School... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

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Faculty & Researchers - Managing the Future of Work

related to the workforce, including the skills gap, degree inflation, care economics, the role of artificial intelligence in employment outcomes, the effectiveness of social entrepreneurs in improving education to employment outcomes, mechanisms for enhancing the... View Details

08 May 2025
Podcast

Upwork’s Hayden Brown on bridging volatility with contingency

"Freelance by choice" can sound like a rationalization—or putting on a brave face—but has the contract labor market improved for white-collar workers, as more, particularly younger professionals, opt in? A look at the benefits for both sides of the bargain and how AI... View Details

01 Dec 2018
News

Competencies and Credentials

pace of technological change, the emergence of a gig economy, and shifting global and labor markets. As faculty co-chairs of the Managing the Future of Work project, William Kerr and Joseph Fuller are leading efforts to prepare leaders... View Details

01 Jul 2021
Office Hours

Readers Ask: Which Companies Are Transforming Work?

compensation, how can managers motivate and promote freelancers? "Managers can motivate part-timers or gig workers in several ways. The first is to make them feel fully included in the group. The second is... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Retail; Manufacturing

Web

Finalists | New Venture Competition

non-native English speakers. Gigit.ai Inez Wihardjo (MBA 2023) Mobile first platform to crowdsource data collection and data labeling. We serve AI companies that need to collect text, video and audio samples to train their ML model and connect them to trained View Details

19 Jan 2022
In Practice

7 Trends to Watch in 2022

As 2022 gets underway we asked our faculty to highlight some trends worth watching in the coming year. Ariel Stern: A new future for digital health care While 2020 and 2021 were years of rapid innovation and deployment of new health care technologies and delivery... View Details

Keywords: by HBS News

07 Jan 2015
Research & Ideas

The Quest for Better Layoffs

liability standards, Feuerstein ended up spending more money than he had. And the company went bankrupt. View VideoA middle-aged worker whose job was replaced by automation reflects on how the loss changed her life. As with many HBS... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Manufacturing

01 Jun 2023
News

Alumni and Faculty Books

corporate social responsibility, which is often little more than window dressing. The book offers an invaluable historical perspective, going back to the Quaker capitalism of George Cadbury and the worker solidarity of Edward Filene.... View Details

Keywords: Publishing Industries (except Internet); Information

30 Nov 2017
News

Happy Meals (Are Here Again)

demarcation. Now the workers are on the floor, delivering orders or helping customers with the new kiosks; Karavites has updated his employee training to include a focus on customer interaction. Average customer count is up at this... View Details

Keywords: Dan Morrell; photographed by Saverio Truglia

Publications