The company has created “elastic teams” consisting of tech freelancers who work on-demand for a range of clients, giving employers access to specialist expertise on a flexible basis.
Callum Adamson, CEO of Distributed, said: “Low-skilled workers who lose their jobs can often rely on the safety net provided by companies like Uber but there hasn’t really been a similar option for high-skilled workers facing uncertainty, until now.
“For employers, hiring tech teams takes too long – 80 days on average for a single app developer – and it costs too much, with 53 percent of the hiring budget typically spent in order to recruit a software engineer. They are expensive to retain and the average tenure is just 11 months. Many companies are realising that they need to hire freelancers, but underestimate the management time, lack of cultural and goal alignment and legal implications that come with managing global armies of freelancers.”
Elastic teams focus on job skills rather than job roles, are available on-demand, cost zero to hire per-employee, do not have to be retained, and offer remote access to a wider global talent pool.
Increasingly, top talent is foregoing full-time roles completely, in favour of more control and flexibility with their career. A report by the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed (IPSE) and Kingston University found that the number of freelance workers in the UK had more than doubled between 2016 and 2019, to 4.42 million.
Mr Adamson added: “Distributed’s revenue has more than doubled during coronavirus lockdown because lots of large businesses and even departments of the UK government have realised that elastic teams provide a better and more cost-effective solution to add technical specialists to their existing teams quickly and easily at any scale.”
The company currently builds software developer teams but plans to expand into more sectors including the creative and design industries.