Upwork's New Strategy: Making Full-Time Employment Easier for Everyone

Upwork, the popular online job marketplace, has recently announced its plans to encourage full-time hiring on its platform. This shift in strategy will allow job seekers and client organizations to form more explicit and long-term partnerships, changing the way Upwork does business entirely.

With its new strategy, Upwork seeks to expand its pool of users and workers by making the job search for full-time positions more accessible on its platform. CEO Hayden Brown shared with Fast Company his excitement for the change, saying, "I'm really happy that now we're offering all of our customers a way to actually get those full-time partnerships off the ground in a lot easier way than ever before."

Upwork's new business model will enable its clients to identify, screen, recruit, onboard, and pay workers from over 180 countries. Small and mid-size companies will also benefit from Upwork's payroll, compliance, and contract management capabilities as part of its expanded offerings. Before committing to full-time employment, employers and employees can test out a position by beginning it as a contract-to-hire arrangement.

According to Upwork's blog post announcing the expansion, full-time hiring, especially on a global basis, has traditionally been "an astronomically expensive bet, a heavy time investment, and a classification nightmare for employers." With Upwork's new business model, the company hopes to alleviate these challenges and enable employers to find the right fit for their team with more ease.

The new strategy may mark a new era for Upwork. Despite a 40% drop in the company's stock price since its public debut in October 2018, it is still up approximately 16% for the year, as of Friday's market closing.

Since the firm began testing its full-time employment function, over 2 million users have expressed interest in contract-to-hire opportunities. The company has also introduced nearly 40,000 new contract-to-hire positions to the market since the start of the year. Upwork is committed to providing its users with the right resources to ensure that they make informed and confident decisions in their job searches.

David Bottoms, General Manager of Upwork Marketplace, emphasized the importance of finding the right people for the right roles. The new strategy offers a way to test how a person fits a role before offering them a full-time position. In addition, employees who are seeking new employment opportunities can use Upwork to explore both full-time and freelance work.

In conclusion, Upwork's new business strategy offers a win-win solution for both job seekers and employers. By facilitating full-time hiring and offering resources to ensure that both parties make informed decisions, Upwork hopes to simplify the process of finding the right fit for long-term partnerships. With the company's commitment to providing excellent services, it is no wonder that Upwork remains a leading platform in the online job marketplace.