The collaborative economy and the development of exchange platforms have led to the diffusion of new consumption, production and financing practices. The work, public debate and regulatory approaches focus mainly on activities that put professionals in contact with individuals (such as cabs or delivery companies) or individuals in contact with each other (such as apartment sharing).
The Institute for Economic and Social Research (IRES) draws attention to the development of platforms that connect professionals with client companies. According to the IRES, " B2B work platforms are one of the next waves of platformization ".
Intellectual service professions (IT, marketing, communication, consulting, design) are particularly sensitive to the effects of platforms and the new organizational models made possible by digital technology.
"These new skills intermediaries are likely to occupy a growing place in competition with traditional players such as temporary staff, Digital Service Companies (DSCs) and IT services companies, leading to an unprecedented phase of outsourcing and contributing to blurring the boundaries of organizations and companies.Several factors combine to promote the development of these " skills intermediaries": technology, the demand for work through outsourcing and the use of subcontractors, and the supply of work with the social demand for autonomy.
After pointing out a " clear lack of knowledge" , whether it is about the number of people involved, the actors operating in France, or the volume of business involved, the IRES researchers alerted the public authorities " to the inconsistencies, the unspoken facts and the difficulties in understanding the size of the B2B labor intermediary market" as well as the difficulties in understanding the working conditions of these workers, who are "often invisible and geographically dispersed".
In the absence of a " definite typology of these actors in the literature", IRES proposes to distinguish four intermediate types:
- Specialist platforms linked to historical players in labor intermediation (in particular deployed or acquired by temporary work players), or positioned very early on the freelance "market", even before technological developments allowed the deployment of platforms;
- start-up platforms" in the intermediation business, which include more recent players, positioned from the outset as "natively digital" players;
- Collective intermediaries, which include self-employed people gathered in collectives and actors organized in a cooperative format (in a BDC or not) within the same category;
- The "consulting intermediaries" grouping collectives of freelancers with a high level of expertise ("premium talents", very often created by former strategy consultants, often of small size).
- Intermediation: market place, relationship building, loyalty, securing contractual relationships, reputation building mechanisms, rating, skills certification, conflict management and mediation...
- Customer-oriented features: secure profile selection and sourcing, profile and skill selection to best meet specifications, project team building, freelance administrative management solutions, human resources features...
- Freelancers/workers " oriented features: visibility, skills directories, targeting of professions, exploitation of professional networks, monetization of the brand, securing the income of workers, increase in skills, training, administrative portage, payment facilities...
Competition with traditional players
Although the market for B2B labor intermediaries is relatively new, with players having mostly emerged in the mid-2010s, it is already giving rise to competitive phenomena in several dimensions."Platform intermediaries originally positioned themselves on jobs carried out by freelancers, in particular jobs related to the Web (Web designer, for example) or to communication (graphic design, Web writers). More recently, freelancing has emerged as a way for employees to escape from increasingly unattractive organizational modes (IT jobs in particular).In the digital professions, B2B intermediaries (start-ups as well as specialized platforms or collective intermediaries) are in direct competition with Digital Service Companies (DSC) to attract digital professionals. "This phenomenon particularly affects young people who see in platforms, rightly or wrongly, an answer to a need for freedom and especially the possibility of developing a higher income stream without having to depend on an employer.
Towards the emergence of super-skills intermediaries
As is often the case in growing markets where the number of players is multiplying, "the question of rationalizing them for reasons of cost and operational efficiency is emerging. Under these conditions, it is likely that the freelance intermediation platform market will be subject to an identical process with the emergence of "super intermediaries" that will come to stand between the client-users and the platform intermediaries. As has been observed in the temporary employment market, the latter are able to centralize the purchase of freelancing services at a single point on behalf of one or more user clients.In addition to the likely exclusion of freelance collectives and cooperatives, "the emergence of these super-intermediaries will have a significant impact on market concentration and profitability of these players."
Creative workers subjected to the diktat of visibility and reputation
"The defenders of platforms highlight the work opportunities that are offered to workers, especially creative ones, or the opening of the offer to people further away from traditional forms of employment, in a context of mass unemployment."The authors of the study emphasize, however, the crucial importance of visibility and reputation: "in a world governed by referencing both in search engines and in the algorithms of platforms, visibility is an essential means of obtaining customers and a salary that supports life. For the freelancer referenced on a platform, it will require a significant investment to be visible among the referenced profiles, and therefore comply with the requirements set by the algorithm. Moreover, " if the freelancer has to build his reputation over a long period of time, the slightest mistake, a click and a bad rating from a disgruntled client is enough to annihilate his efforts, degrade his rating, or even be unsubscribed".
In conclusion, the authors of the study point out " strong expectations in terms of regulation". They concern the legal and contractual dimension of work, the security of workers, collective bargaining and the provision of tools to the actors.
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