Prof Andrew Burke believes freelance, project-based work will become more common in the future.

Speaking at the virtual Future Human conference earlier this year, Trinity Business School dean Prof Andrew Burke discussed the growth of what he called the ‘project economy’.

This entails hiring people for specialised projects rather than taking on full-time employees, which Burke said will add significant value to companies, while mitigating the risk of taking on too many staff members at a volatile growth stage.

“If the company isn’t actually certain that that growth in business is going to continue or that the higher level of activities is going to continue, then they understandably will be worried about taking on new projects,” he said.

“What the freelance model enables businesses to do in the project economy is it allows businesses to treat this extra or uncertain growth as projects and to predominantly hire a freelance team to work those projects.”

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Words by Jenny Darmody