Introduction

A new approach to employment has enabled companies to hire from a wider pool of talent and has given workers the possibility of working from anywhere in the world. Recent evidence has shown exponential growth of non-standard work arrangements, including “gig work,” which has dominated employment policy debates in recent decades. However, while the recent increase in gig workers is certainly significant, most workers do not fall into this category: in fact, only one in ten workers rely on gig work. Other forms of non-standard work have also increased dramatically, including self-employment and global remote work. Many companies have embraced this new outlook as the technological infrastructure to support remote work has become widely available. The COVID pandemic has acted as a catalyst, but remote and global work are not new. Other forces, such as the prevalence of enterprise messaging apps and project management tools, have changed the way workers collaborate, allowing teams to operate efficiently regardless of their members’ physical locations, and increasing the number of nomadic employees. This is especially true for tech workers, for whom most jobs simply require a laptop and an internet connection; but the phenomenon has been affecting workers across the board.

Samuel Dahan & Philippe Bouaziz