Microsoft to acquire UpWork? It’s Only a Matter of Time

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According to UpWork CEO Stephane Kasriel, “While enterprises today spend an estimated 3.5 trillion on contingent labor, the model for working with external talent is restrictive. Together with Microsoft, Upwork is empowering organizations to adopt a more flexible workforce model that delivers better visibility, greater access to skills, and richer reporting capabilities than can be gained through traditional workforce models.”

A new working economy

The freelance economy is becoming the new normal for 21st-century workers. According to The Future of Workforce Report released by UpWork, by 2028, 73% of all teams will have remote workers, with the younger generation being more open to freelance and temporary work so as not to experience burnout in a full-time, constricting role.

It isn’t just workers benefiting from freelance opportunities. Businesses are able to pay per task, hire more efficiently, and not lock-in to long-term employment contracts to get work done. This is why, according to UpWork CEO Stephane Kasriel, freelancing is the next industrial revolution. “We are in the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” notes Kasriel. “A period of rapid change in work driven by increasing automation, but we have a unique opportunity to guide the future of work and freelancers will play more of a key role than people realize.”