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Model 3: Free Agents
Get Professional
The next natural step from Advice
flexible work is to recog- If you decide to use the
nize that there are many flexible work hiring model,don’t just
individuals out there who “cut and paste” standard policies and
procedures. Get proper professional
are eminently qualified to
advice to make sure your employ-
undertake a job for you,
ment procedures are customized to
but who do not want to
comply with federal and state laws.
work full-time for one
company, as a core
employee or even as a flexible worker.
The last three years have seen an enormous increase in the
number of “free agents,” as defined and described in Chapter
1—individuals who want the flexibility of self-employment.
As we noted in Chapter 1, the concept of free agency (made
popular by Dan Pink, author of the definitive work on free
agents: Free Agent Nation: How America’s New Independent
Workers Are Transforming the Way We Live) reached its peak
during the dot-com boom of 1998-2000. Although the growth in
the number of free agents has certainly slowed in recent years,
the idea of using free agents as a hiring model is very much
here to stay.
Using free agents as a Free Agents
hiring model is particularly Who are free agents?
appropriate in the follow- Consultants,of course,but
ing situations: also welders,accountants,plastic
extrusion plant operatives,and so on:
• The job is discrete there are free agents doing almost
and measurable. eveything. Counting “the self-
Free agents, not employed,freelancers,‘e-lancers,’
being direct employ- independent contractors,home-based
businesspeople,solo practitioners,
ees on a salary, are
independent professionals,and opera-
often paid on results.
tors of microbusinesses,” according to
This works best
Dan Pink,author of Free Agent Nation,
where the output of there are at least 30 million free
the job is quantifi- agents in the U.S. alone.
able (for example,