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Nearly Half of UK Workers Want Free Agent Career Path

Media Release

6th December 2005

Growth of independent career paths overtaking traditional employment

Almost 50% of British workers want to opt out of the traditional employment relationship to become self-employed or run their own businesses, according to a new international workplace survey.

The Kelly World at Work survey, conducted by global recruitment agency, Kelly Services, sought the views of almost 19,000 workers in 12 countries across Europe.

The survey found a strong entrepreneurial trend among UK’s workers with 41% saying they would prefer something other than being directly engaged by an employer.    

  • The largest share (20%) said they wanted to be ‘free agents’ doing consulting, temporary or contract work
  • 14% said they would like to run their own businesses
  • 8% said they wanted to be freelancers’ who would seek out contract work from various employers.

Steve Girdler, director of marketing at Kelly Services UK said the findings point to a strong entrepreneurial culture amongst individuals who would once have been happy to remain employees.

“Many more people want to be in charge of their own destiny. These so called free agents are attracted by the autonomy, independence and flexibility of self-employment.

“The trend toward globalisation and outsourcing has seen many large organisations scale back their workforce and outsource non core functions, creating new opportunities for these independent contractors.

“The combination of several workplace trends – including shortened job cycles, the increase of project work, the acceptance of a new lifestyle and the emergence of the Internet and other technology – points to this trend of free agent workers becoming more prevalent and more of an employment norm in the coming years.

“Many younger people are more discerning about what an employer can offer them, and many do not want to work for a large organisation.    

“With job security now an issue with even the biggest firms, many employees feel they will have more certainty working for themselves.”

Males in the UK were more enthusiastic about self-employment (47%) than females (38%).

A number of countries showed a strong leaning towards a more entrepreneurial culture of employment including Russia, Germany, Sweden, France, and to a lesser extent, and Spain.

The outstanding finding was in Russia, where 97% of those surveyed – the highest of any country in the survey - said they wanted some form of self-employment.

Those industries with the greatest potential to attract self-employed individuals were identified as business services, engineering, education, IT, travel and leisure.

Kelly Services, Inc. (Nasdaq: KELYA, KELYB) is a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Troy, Michigan (USA), offering staffing solutions that include temporary services, staff leasing, outsourcing, vendor on-site and full-time placement. Kelly owns and operates 2,600 offices in 27 countries. Kelly provides employment for nearly 700,000 employees annually, with skills including office services, accounting, engineering, information technology, law, science, marketing, light industrial, education, health care and home care. Revenue in 2004 was US$4.98 billion. Visit http://www.kellyservices.com