HR managers are looking forward to the platform economy

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

What impact will the platform economy have on employment and human resources departments? This is the question that the Adecco Group and the Cuatrecasas Institute of Legal Strategy in HR have launched to more than 200 directors of human resources representative of the Spanish territory and with the presence of all economic sectors. This survey is part of the Technos Project, which aims to analyze the impact of each of the major new technologies in both the corporate and organizational structure of the work.

For 59.3% of those responsible for Human Resources surveyed by Adecco and Cuatrecasas, they believe that the platform economy will stimulate employment as these platforms become more regulated. The need for regulation was considered by 37.4% to not be relevant for the impact to be positive, while only 3.3% believe that they will not be a major source of employment.

In this line, the majority (71.4%) considers that this type of companies would be without problems to a greater regulation, compared to 25.3% who think it would be very harmful and 3.3% believe that a new stricter legislation would mean the end of the platform economy.

On the other hand, 21.1% of the surveyed believe that the platform economy is the employment model of the future. A theory that the overwhelming majority of professionals do not share, although 78.9% declare that despite not being so, the platform economy will continue to grow the weight of this model in the coming years. In fact, none believe that it will be a minority option or that it will lose weight in the medium term.

In this sense, 41.6% believe that traditional companies will end up incorporating the economy of platforms in their structures, while 31.5% think that Public Administrations will limit their freedom to adapt to conventional regulations. The remaining 27% believe that the situation will be similar to the one that exists today. In addition, 48.4% of HR professionals believe that in two years the conditions of workers on these platforms will have improved.

Another of the major issues addressed in the survey has been the impact that the platform economy will have on the price of services and products from more traditional channels. In this regard, 2 out of 3 respondents believe that it will end up forcing a decline in prices in the traditional economy and that the more traditional sectors will have to adapt to this in order not to disappear. However, 25.3% believe that both price policies can coexist indistinctly and the remaining 11% believe that it will be the platform economy that must raise its prices to match the traditional economy.

In this sense, 77.3% see that passenger transport will be the sector most affected by the advance of the economy of platforms, followed by the hotel sector (63.6% of responses), logistics and commercial transport (47.7%) and distribution (46.6%).

Finally, almost half of HR professionals (48.9%) believe that the platform economy has democratized services and experiences for workers, compared to 24.4% who think that this is not the case. The remaining 26.7% do not know what to think about this matter.

In this regard, Guillermo Tena, Director of the Cuatrecasas Institute indicated, "In the consideration of employed experience it seems to make sense to incorporate the independent professionals who provide services to the platform economy company as they contribute in the same way that they can contribute employees "from the payroll" to the experience that the client may have with the company."

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

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