How Online Jobs Are Creating New Opportunities for Flexibility

Reducing the time and energy spent commuting to work can increase productivity when working remotely. Additionally, it can lower stress levels and assist staff in striking a balance between work and personal life. In this paper, task flexibility and geographical flexibility—the two main characteristics of work flexibility—are examined to see how platforms influence worker flexibility. We use an analytical framework created from earlier research to examine platform worker interview data.

Small-scale Employment

Even while many online professions have longer-term contracts, microtasks can give a lot of flexibility. Platforms enable workers to select projects based on interest and expertise. These are typically brief, repetitive tasks that pay as little as a few dollars each. Instant payments also make it possible to go from job to cash in hand quickly. Many tasks, including as image and video processing, data entry, transcription, and paid surveys, can be completed from home on well-known microtask sites like Amazon's Mechanical Turk. More recent sites, like Remotasks, link labourers and clients in need of website verification, data analysis, and translation. Some websites, such as TaskRabbit, concentrate on local jobs like errand running and minor house repairs. Some companies, like Neevo, use microworkers as human trainers for artificial intelligence. These side gigs can be quite profitable due to the specialised skills required. Higher earning potential may also result from the capacity to become proficient at the tasks via practice and repetition.

Client Support

Working online often involves communicating with clients via phone, chat, or email. Although the timetables and pay scales for these jobs may vary, they might offer flexibility to workers who like to work independently. Online job postings are more flexible than traditional newspaper ads, which have a set duration. You can change or remove them as needed. This enables businesses to stop hiring when they've found the ideal applicant or change their advertising to appeal to a new group. Providing customer support teams with flexible work schedules can assist guarantee that output is constant regardless of the time or location of the workforce. According to ICMI, self-service channels should be established to assist clients, resources such as interaction scripts and SOPs should be updated, and team members should be able to switch shifts without management interference. In conjunction with remote meetings and one-on-one conversations, these tools can help teams achieve their productivity objectives more easily.

Community Supervision

The field of community management creates an environment where customers may engage with businesses, form bonds with them, become loyal to them, and help one another. It covers crucial tasks like product creation and crisis management in addition to a wide range of responsibilities including customer service and sentiment monitoring. Strong commercial acumen and effective online and interpersonal communication abilities are essential for this kind of position. When difficulties emerge, whether they are related to consumer complaints or public relations problems, they must be ready to act swiftly and composedly. In a similar vein, they must be able to monitor analytics and data that follow KPIs linked to revenue targets or comment response times. Individuals possessing the appropriate combination of hard and soft skills can significantly impact their companies by fostering brand loyalty and boosting sales via community involvement. Any company's marketing plan must include community management.