HRM & Design of Work

New Forms of Employment – How it is practical in Sri Lankan context

Due to social, economic & technological changes new forms of employment has risen where it is more different from traditional work. It is found that these new forms of employment have the potential to transform traditional relationships between employer & employee.

The industrial world is now looking for options to replace full time permanent employment by some of following alternatives.

·      Temporary working

·      Part-time working

·      Job sharing

·      Home working

In Europe, they have identified several new forms of employment which is already in practice.

Employee Sharing

Individual worker jointly hired by several employers in different companies.

Job Sharing

An employer hires a group of workers to jointly perform a specific job.

Interim Management

Experts are hired temporarily to perform a specific project or to solve a specific problem.

Casual Work

An employer is not obliged to provide regular work to the employee, but maintains a flexibility to call them on demand.

Voucher based work

Where employer-employee relationship based on a voucher purchased by the employer from an authorized organization which covers pay & social security contributions.

ICT based mobile work

Workers do not perform their duties in an exact work premises where they work form any place at any time supporting by new technologies.

Crowd employment

Virtual platform linked to larger tasks broken in to small jobs with a division of labour among virtual cloud of workers.

Even though this looks like a successful results-oriented way of employment in Europe, there are some practical issues that needs to be addressed before implementing the same in Sri Lankan context.

As an example, ICT based mobile work offers higher flexibility & empowers the employees but also results in increased stress levels, extra working hours which impacts on work-life balance.

For self-employed & freelancers, crowd employment & portfolio work offers richer mix of tasks and more opportunities.

Casual work is a way of empowering & providing higher job flexibility but results in low training, low levels of job & income security.

Voucher based work results in some job insecurity, social & professional isolation & limited access to further trainings.

It is more practical to implement Employee sharing, Job sharing & Interim management as new forms of employment in Sri Lankan context considering the labour market in the country. Other forms of employment discussed above are not the most suitable ones in Sri Lanka because they need to be fulfilled with some level of discipline & ethics of both employees & employers.  

Sri Lanka can move to new forms of employment in the future by enabling all the features we discussed above after developing people’s attitudes & the way they think of their jobs.

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References

New forms of employment (2019) Eurofound. Available at: https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/topic/new-forms-of-employment.

Irene, M. (2015) New Forms Of Employment Offer Both Benefits And Risks, Social Europe. Available at: https://www.socialeurope.eu/new-forms-of-employment-offer-both-benefits-and-risks.

Social Protection for Workers in New Forms of Employment (2019) International Labour Organization. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3wXMxGg12c.