‘Demand for high-skill talent on contract grows’

There has been a 105 per cent increase in demand for high-skill talent across roles on a contractual basis in the last 12 months, as workforce mobility continues to evolve, a new report said on Wednesday.According to tech-led enterprise gig platform Awign, about 85 per cent of the overall demand coming from enterprises has been for gig talent in tech roles which include roles of full stack developers, data scientists, React and Java developers, mobile app developers, and cloud engineers.”Amid changing business priorities in a competitive landscape, enterprises have shown an increasing preference to work with high-skill gig talent for specialised roles on a project or contract basis,” said Gurpreet Singh, Co-founder and Chief Business Officer, Awign.”The gig model allows enterprises to variablise their fixed costs and optimise their toplines, and the growing adoption is a result of focus on business profitability. In the coming years, a hybrid workforce – dominated by the gig workforce will become the standard norm of working for enterprises across the globe,” he added.The report observes that while 76 per cent of the demand for high-skill talent comes from large enterprises, mid-size enterprises along with startups and growing enterprises contributed to 16 per cent and 8 per cent of the demand, respectively.Moreover, the increased demand for high-skill contractual talent has been observed in non-tech roles as well, particularly in creative roles.Gigs in non-tech roles such as HR and recruitment, mechanical engineering, and content writing have also seen a 5 per cent, 8 per cent and 10 per cent spike in demand in the last 6 months, the report said.