It’s hard to imagine that anyone would want to start a blog with the line … ‘what a crazy year it’s been’, but that’s exactly what we’re doing today.

You see, it’s been incredibly tough for so many people. During the on-going pandemic too many people have lost their jobs, lost their way or worse still lost family members. Everyone out there is hoping for a much better, calmer 2021 but as we approach the end of December, we’re certainly starting to see some green shoots of recovery, a strong level of positivity and a real sense of spirit from our clients as well as our freelancers.

We’ve been saying for years that for clients, freelancing is the best way forward. Businesses come to us because we offer talented individuals that can help them develop. More and more this year we’re seeing a shift towards SME’s and some bigger brands using freelance support as and when they need them. The savings for these businesses can be huge and they’re finding that there’s no shortfall in talent between full time staff and the cost effective, flexibility of bringing in freelancers.

Away from the client side of the business and from a freelancer point of view, this type of work can give you a sense of freedom that can help balance your life better, it gives you variety and an overall sense of flexibility.  The one thing we’ve all seen this year is that the so called ‘security of a salaried job’ simply isn’t there anymore. It’s mad, but it’s also true.

Most of us hadn’t even heard the word ‘furlough’ this time last year and the Self-Employed Income Support Grant hadn’t even been thought about, but we definitely know of them now. As certain business sectors have tightened their belts, redundancies have followed, and the jobs market has become incredibly difficult as the pandemic continues to impact.

But there are a few surprising positives starting to emerge including the increased use of digital communication which means that remote working is now the norm rather than the oddity. Businesses are clearly becoming less London centric and that’s good for the country as a whole. At The Work Crowd we’ve also seen the emergence of a whole host of start-up businesses that are calling on us for marketing, comms and design support.

Also, just a quick note about our business itself. In 2020, The Work Crowd underwent a complete rebranding exercise and although it’s always sad to say goodbye the old stuff, it is great to see the new design elements brought forward. New branding meant a new website and generally we’ve taken a slightly new approach.

The business continues to flourish and today we are proud to genuinely be a global marketing community of brilliant freelancers that offer clients the ability to buy in the talent they need, exactly ‘when’ they need it, which ultimately, is a lot less expensive.

As if to proof our global credentials, we can highlight the fact that 20% of our members are based either in Europe, the Middle East, China or the US and that figure is growing on a monthly basis. This is also matched by a significant growth in our non-UK client base which continues at real pace. Clients aren’t just coming from the UK, they’re coming to us from across the globe.

We always like to think that the beauty of The Work Crowd is that we value ‘quality of freelancers’ over ‘quantity’ and it’s the reason why our clients are rarely one off, project clients. They keep coming back because we offer some of the most talented and creative designers, content creators, marketing strategists, PR specialists, social media and digital gurus. Each individual freelancer is a vetted pro, with a proven track record. It’s fair to say that talent is important to us at The Work Crowd because it’s what our clients demand, want and need from the freelancers that we provide.

We wouldn’t be who we are, without the continued support of our amasing community of incredible freelancers, so thank you.

Lastly, whatever you do after reading this, please make sure that you take time to indulge yourself just a bit, spend some time with loved ones if you can and above anything else enjoy the break … we suspect that you’re going to need it heading in to 2021.

Happy holidays to all of our clients and our freelancers.

Madeleine Weightman

Co-Founder

The Work Crowd