 Hi, welcome to this new series called The New Code of Work brought to you by Peoplestrong. I'm Abhijit Bhaduri and I'm here in this amazingly beautiful studio of Sony Pictures Network India. And I'm in conversation with the CHRO of Sony Pictures Network, Manu Narangwadwa. And the focus is going to be on what can we learn about the gig economy because this is inevitable. It is going to be the new way in which all organizations will have to rethink their workplace practices. One of the things that I want to do is to remove this whole concept that, you know, the gig economy seems like a very contemporary term, but you would have probably seen it working even in your previous employer's places. Is that accurate to say? Yes and no. In the variety of industries that I have experienced in my last two plus decades of work, I have shifted from education to technology to healthcare, financial services, FMCG to now being media and entertainment industry. The patterns vary drastically from a set employment pattern which a technology, industry or financial services is used to. As you take a fast track towards FMCG, the format of gig workforce is a little prevalent because the last mile distribution largely gets taken care of by workers who are working on freelance contracts. However, when we come closer to media and entertainment industry, which is what I represent today, this industry has operated in the gig format since inception. Today, the media and entertainment industry overall employs about 4 million people in India and you would be surprised that only 20% of this workforce is actually organized or has full-time employment. So someone like you who is a full-time employee is actually the aberration, not the knock? Absolutely. In this industry, to be in a full-time employment is rather in the minority, 80% of the industry actually operates on gig format. Right from the first movie that was made way back in 1900-earlies to the formats that you see today in micro-viewing to theatrics, production teams come together. They put an ensemble of the best talent, which is the lead actors, actresses that we see, to directors, to camera person, to anybody who has a role to play in that format. They come together, put that ensemble for the consumer, the viewer and disperse after that format is closed and they move on to the next. So this is a way it has operated all the way and it feels very energizing to see this working so fluently and efficiently in an industry like media and entertainment. And when you think about it's not just media and entertainment but many other sectors. You know, you talked about FMCG and even in manufacturing. There's a whole range of people that we employ today in our home. Chances are that you are not using the term gig worker but many of the people who work in domestic sectors are also gig workers because there is no fixed employer. And of course, you know, when you think about all the ride-sharing services or the delivery services that are run by food delivery companies, all of that is the gig work. But I think when we club all of it together in one place, you know, as one big chunk, perhaps we are missing the nuances of skills because in the gig work for sets, you know, a range of skills from something which is fairly replaceable, you know, for example, in a ride hailing service, you don't really care about who is the person who is delivering you from one place to the other. But in case of, let's say, a performance, let's say with a theater actor or a film actor, you really care about who is the person who is doing that role. So it sort of moves from one end of the talent spectrum to the other. Is it because, you know, creative people find it harder to work in a fixed employment model or is that how it is? Well, I'd rather say that's a myth than reality. Creativity and organized pattern of working are not in contrast with each other. They are rather in harmony of each other. Many creative talent love to abide by the structure and format which production gives them. Having said that, creative talent definitely does not look forward to the bureaucracy and the box that an organization sets itself into. Which would be, you know, you come in at this time, you punch your attendance. You come in, you punch your attendance to follow a policy or practice. From a spectrum of what you just stated, what we define in multiple industries, whether it is construction to the teleporting industry today, like in Uber, Ola, the liquid workforce, which is low on skill but high on availability and can be potted across to gig artists, which is literally the most evolved form in which you're paying a premium toward the talent and the skill, it varies across. A workforce pattern on liquid workforce may still enjoy the benefits of organized setup, but a gig artist may look forward to the freedom of expression and definitely not look forward to getting tied down by the system of the organization. So it kind of varies across the spectrum in both the places. Would it therefore be reasonable to say that over a span of time, when you look into the future, the people who are highly skilled, the experts, they will move outside of the organizations and is it going to be, the organizations will have the generalist and, you know, they will employ the specialist. Is that where the future of work is going to be? If I'm holding the crystal ball, my answer would be absolutely yes. The phenomena globally has already moved where 40% of the specialized skill sets being employed by the organizations today are already in a gig format. Whether you take specialized skill set in the form of consult to whether you take specialized skill set in the form of digital evolution of organizations or coming in closer to media and entertainment, the niche skills of the actors, the artists, the camera person, which are very highly skilled and niche in their setup, the organizations do land up contracting for the service, contracting for the skill as compared to getting into a contract of long-term engagement or indefinite engagement of employment as we say. So my answer on the crystal ball will be, I would look forward to seeing almost a 60-40 ratio where 60% of my need of human capital will move to gig format in the years to come. So if you are advising a CHRO about the way to think about talent, a talent strategy, is it reasonable to say that they should incorporate the assumption that a certain part, a certain percentage is going to be fulfilled by the gig workers and these gig artists or gig workers, depending on which end of the spectrum you are talking about, they are not going to be on your roles. And already we see many examples of this. India being a very, very high concentration of the world's population of gig workers is actually provided by India, that's almost 30-40%. And if you also look at the other shift that I noticed is that a number of millennials and Gen Z, they actually like to work in this gig format where they have the freedom and flexibility. So does it mean that you will see a lot more people who are self-driven as you are moving into the gig workforce? Is that a criteria for success? Absolutely. So to your first question on advice to my fellow CHROs or HR leaders who are looking for a mining gig workforce format in their organization setup would be, make sure it is a part of it because it gives you two big advantages. The first biggest advantage it gives you is it gets you the ready reckoner of skills available at a much faster speed than the development time taken for internal talent or as for that matter for hiring somebody afresh. The second biggest advantage which I think all of us run against the time on is managing the business case of full-term employment and the rising costs there on versus managing the operating cost with gig format. So operating cost pressures coupled with the speed of skill that is available literally makes it a necessity for a CHRO to think about gig format inclusion. On the second part of whether it's right for individuals or not, my advice to individuals who are looking in for a gig format work would be if you are somebody who is self-driven, who is self-initiated and not manager-initiated when their goals go for gig. But if you are somebody who is looking in for a constant source of inspiration, direction of a north star by somebody and organization or a person, then gig is not for you. And in fact, we were having this dialogue early on. What was your experience as you transitioned on from being an organized setup worker to being a gig worker right now? I think there are some benefits which I think people really anticipate. So which means you have the freedom to choose the kind of work that you like to do. I think that's one of the biggest advantages. Being able to choose projects which also simultaneously value add back to me. That's a massive advantage. Being able to work with a wide range of industries, which when I work in one particular sector, it gets limited. That is another big advantage. But it certainly means that you become really like your own C-suite. You are your own sort of CLO, you are your own CMO, you manage your own finances. So you build a network. Eventually as your work grows, I found that it was easy for me to have the flexibility of working with a few gig workers myself and also outsourcing some of the things which I am completely incapable of doing whether it was the taxation part of it, which you sort of work with a professional services company or with some of the other things which you manage. Those are some of the pieces that when you are working inside an organization, it's almost invisible. You just take it for granted. It's always there. But when you're on your own, I think that's one big shift. For me, that was a big change that I had to make in my life. But overall, I think the opportunity to really sharpen your skill is a disproportionate advantage that you have as a gig worker. I completely agree with you there that as a gig workforce expands, the biggest thing to look out would be for people who are self-initiators, self-starters, as you rightly stated, but also who want to really run in the speed of upskilling themselves against others much faster. In the organizations what happens and just from a comparison perspective or a contrast, the organization largely picks up the baiting of developing you, whether it is your skill or it is your leadership depth or at the end of the day, it's your ability to really take up roles which are expanded. But when you really take up a gig workforce format and taking a relevance of media and entertainment today, I don't think you're running towards the next job or post. What you're learning towards is excellence. And excellence comes when you are self-investing the time and the effort to be able to learn something new which makes you a better professional and gives you the edge against five others who are competing for the same space. But I also think that you asked about what was the experience like I have talked about what is great. But I also talked to you about what is not great. I think when you're on your own as a freelancer, you miss this at least for someone like me. I love to bounce my ideas off with a group of people. I have always been very lucky to work with an amazingly gifted set of people, professionals who I have worked with. You miss that because you go and meet them but there is no spontaneous conversation that you can just step out and work with a set of four or five people, bounce an idea off, and then that conversation leaves you completely energized. It doesn't happen like that. So I think that's a disadvantage. Also, I think your personal brand becomes extremely important when you're a gig worker and we don't realize it early enough when you're working because your business card actually takes care of the branding part of it. When you shred your business card, you're really on your own and you're known by the skill and the brand that you represent. So I think that's the other piece that people don't invest early enough. These two I would say are probably the two toughest pieces. In fact, you stated something which makes it very relatable and if one would comment on the pattern of personal branding time and effort investments which leading stars, actors, celebrities, even as for that matter, many people who are behind the scenes also recognized camera persons, recognized artists, design, studio experts, they invest a lot of time on personal branding. In fact, any element of social media is filled and inundated with that. So the remark which you made is so correlational that if you are a gig worker, make sure you invest in your personal brand. Don't shy about it because your personal brand is what gets you the recognition and therefore your next gig assignment as for that matter as well. And it makes it a lot more relatable for a person to associate your value proposition with what you represent as your brand per se. True, true. So if I were to just sort of really summarize a couple of things what stood out for me in this conversation was that this is something that is going on, it's happening and it makes sense because when I look at the statistics, people are living much longer. Longevity has gone up dramatically in every country and especially in a country like India it has gone up a lot and then you also simultaneously when you look at the lifespan of organizations that has dropped down a lot. So in this combination, people are going to actually land up doing multiple stints so you know this whole model of one piece of employment is going to get replaced by multiple gigs or stints. And you also to some extent see that happening in organizations that people are brought together in case of projects. You work together inside the organization and then you disband. And the people you enjoyed working with you go back and want to work with them again on yet another project. You find an excuse to work with them. In case of a gig, this is how your life is going to be. I want to start with a different part of this whole process about attracting talent, about hiring people and the contracts and all of that. How different is it when you are working with full-time employees versus handling contracts and acquisition for gig workers? Does it really change a lot? What would be the key differences? Well, as you highlighted, gig workforce used to get hired if I'm talking about different industries who are still nascent in hiring gig workforce. The prime drivers were bringing the cost down because I don't have a full-time resource or to fast-track a skill that I want to get on board. Interestingly, organizations, as they are looking at the need to respond to the agility in the market or the speed of consumer sentiment and are also looking at business growth in which the lifetime of an organization itself is shrinking, the gig workforce format is already becoming a prominent part of the business goals. In that spare, the hiring practices are more and more starting to consolidate. Yet there are many comparative contrasts. For example, the philosophy of talent acquisition is to hire a workforce. Whereas when you look at a gig format, it goes for work fit. A very interesting concept from a workforce to work fit. Tell me more about the work fit part of it. Absolutely. So from a work fit perspective, you're hiring for work and the skill that fits the organization's goal as comparing your hiring the force to drive the longevity of the organization. Let me take a few examples around the talent acquisition side. Classically in talent acquisition, we take a process which is very rigorous towards hiring a full-time manpower. And I'm taking an experience of my previous industries in which you will have a long exercise of manpower planning, costing, taking it to budgeting exercises. You had to do the ratios. I'm seeing a smile on your face because I'm sure we've all been there. Absolutely, we've all been there, done that. And really kind of taking it to the CFO and then taking it to the budgeting committee to really say how my OPEC still makes justified keeping the growth agenda of the organization in mind. And this is a long haul complex process. In contrast to that, hiring a gig workforce format is relatively swift agile because one, you're able to bring a person for a relative period of time directly fitted to the work, the work fit. And they are able to also directly correlate that cost with the project operating cost and not necessarily the lifetime cost of the employee who's on board. The second interesting fact is that when somebody hires a full-time employee it usually involves viewing the candidature from a holistic perspective. For example, will this employee be suitable to the job at hand? Will they be suitable to the culture of the organization? Most importantly, will I have a career path for them? And these questions make it very complex to really take a decision on hiring a full-time employee. Fast-track or compare it, the hiring decision for a gig-format worker is far more seamless because you're not looking for a long-term tenor rather you're looking in for the fitment of the skill. Again, work fit. The decisioning becomes faster because also looking into the cultural parameters you're not necessarily looking at a simulation of 100% efficiency. As long as the worker who's coming on a gig-format is on similar value systems as the organization brings to the table it's an easy fit. Why should you care about the values fit? Given the fact that this is for just a project and it's not long-term you are really looking at classically the skills and competencies why would you even worry about culture fit and all of that? Why did I anticipate you'd ask that? Therefore I fitted this answer in because it's a very important element. It's not as significant as you're hiring a full-time employee but it's equally significant when you're hiring a gig workforce resource because irrespective of the longevity in the organization they still do represent the organization's goal and its delivery. At the end of the day the work product whether it is a product or a service for us its content that all of us watch has to be aligned to the philosophy of what the company drives. Just as an example at Sony Pictures Networks our target audience is urban professionals working not working people who are progressive. If I was to look at a gig format being put together to hire for a fiction I would look in for people who come in with similar patterns of thinking whether it is the writers, it is the directors it is the creative artists who will create the background on that fiction story. So it's very important to have the cultural threads being aligned having said that will I completely go a nine-yard extent to see the cultural fitment for long-term suitability my answer would be relatively lesser but it's a very important part if I must say. And then when you are looking at these contracts what kind of clauses are peculiar to the gig workers and what you would never ever put in for a full-time employee just give me one or two examples of that I mean what would you say? In a gig workforce format the contracts differentiation one big contract differentiation is how you are looking at safeguarding your IP very important part because gig workforce worker is coming in to help you in a part of your larger business school and they could also be working with your competitor? Absolutely. So they would be multi-employed with competition with competitors with alternate industries so IP safeguard is one very important contract element which is a part of our gig workforce the second one which is very interesting is how there is a very direct correlation of paper performance this is a very interesting one which I also learned as I experienced the media and entertainment industry that generally when you hire for a full-time employment there is a very small clause to say your annual bonus pay will be commensurate to how you perform through the year sure however it becomes a lot more granular and peculiar when you are creating a contract for a gig worker in our industry it is very directly correlational as I stated to either the top line the profits that the contract or the project generates to secondly also some fail mode clauses for example if the project has to complete in three months failure to do so also has some accountability on part of the gig worker to make sure it happens because time is value and therefore it is money so these are the two big which I can think of the third differentiator is in a classical employment contract there is a long list of benefits which an employee gets oh that's true which a long-term in nature which takes care of not just the employee but also the ecosystem of the employee so the families covered in the medical insurance and all that the ecosystem is covered whereas in a gig format the rewards and management are largely short-term in nature and therefore the premium on those rewards and benefits are sometimes even 10x premium to what you would pay to a full-time resource give me an example of that because you know in many of the cohorts I mean for example you hire a bunch of people from an engineering college or a you know B school when you do that they largely at least in the initial years move roughly in tandem you know what they earn what the benefits and the positions plus minus a little bit here and there but in case of the gig artists it could be dramatically different how dramatically different could that be? as I stated in the same project if you and I are gig artists but you have gained your personal brand's premium which is much higher than mine so irrespective of you and I doing a very similar job in that project your and my premium differential could be anywhere from x to 10x and that's the differential which the industry is comfortable with because the belief is that you have been able to gain that personal brand in our previous section we talked about personal brand the relevance and the premium of that personal brand comes in because the niche skill and the value proposition which you bring to the table is different than that of mine and the industry is very comfortable with it because the world is moving in that direction gone are the days when we should be only looking at employment contracts in which there is a 10% annual increment rate and there is a appraisal based bonus which comes in if you are a gig worker I think the opportunity is much larger for you to actually hone your skill premiumize your personal brand and therefore get the premium in this space which is much higher than a classical employment worker so in that sense what you are describing is that the gig workers premium is directly correlated to what the audience wants if the audience accepts it it is terrific if the audience rejects it seniority pedigree from which particular college you graduate all of that is completely irrelevant absolutely and they are becoming more and more irrelevant by the day and I am seeing this phenomena broad basing itself not just in media and entertainment but it is broad basing in other skills as well for example in consulting or if you really take the example of other allied industries where the format is expanding itself like technology the enablement of the person who is coming on your project is largely defined by the skillset and the exposure which they bring to the table and the premium of the value is there as compared to the numbers of years of experience the classical whether you are from the top four business schools of the country and so on and so forth which actually leads me to the other piece that you know after the person joins the project you know in case of a full-time employee you hire the person and the first couple of days depending on the kind of industry that you are in is spent in onboarding the person you know the person gets to know you know how does the organization work what are my do's and don'ts and all of that is there something like that you guys also do I mean how does it work well there is this one part of prioritization which one gets to do and as the chief human resource officer I would be honest in stating that in this industry less than 55% of the gig format workers undergo any version of onboarding or assimilation and there is a reason to it it's not the pattern of why we are not doing it but because the gig format worker who comes on board is purpose driven knows that they are getting the skill on the table which is required by the organization so their need or necessity to know the larger ecosystem of the organization which is what an onboarding process does is relatively less their need is higher to get onboarded on the project and the purpose of that project for example if there is a script on which I have onboarded a set of artists the need of onboarding them to the ecosystem of who is the producer, who is the director who is the camera person behind who is going to be the studio artists what is going to be the script looking like the need there is much faster as compared to explaining to them at a larger ecosystem level of what the organization is doing the second biggest part of interesting facet is assimilation the assimilation need though is much higher which goes back to the previous point which I stated it's very important for us to look at the cultural assimilation and thread affinity of the people that we hire even in a gig format because they should be able to represent the cultural ethos of what my brand stands for so less onboarding but a very high focus on assimilating them on and on because that also becomes a factor for them to come back and work on other assignments with us you know this is something I've always wanted to ask somebody who works in the entertainment segment are the creative people you know the popular stereotype you know is that the creative people are really difficult guys they're temperamental is that even true or do you find that you know that's a myth and that they are actually really really very disciplined they need to work at a certain time what has been your experience I'll say it's been a mixed bag of both the industry has become a far more progressive and organized setup given the financial pressures on production and the focus a lot more on the box office collections as compared to just releasing a big theatrical today when small productions land up generating 10 to 20 times the revenue base as expected it's become a lot more important for production houses including ours to make sure our costs are optimally managed so the fiduciary controls have taken precedence so by design all the key artists that you talk about today have developed or have a work ethos which is far more disciplined far more organized as compared to erstwhile eras where some of these things were taken for granted the other piece which I had referred in my erstwhile comments is that when the contracts are designed in a way that you have a role to play in ensuring the timely completion of project by design your ethos and your compliance in your governance helps you do that one very interesting facet which has been my personal learning is that in this industry talent whether it is in front of your screen or behind the screen works really really hard and I think the premium of that hard work is what really creates a continued attraction for this industry and that hard work under very extenuating circumstances right from the time where in some of the production spaces you may not even have an air conditioner or a fan working but you still are expected to deliver your best shot to the times when you may not get your right meal in place this industry toils and continues to put forth the best content and viewership possible I fully agree that that's one of the myths that we have about creative work is that you know I think there are two phases of creative work the first phase is more divergent you know where people are looking at ideas so for example when you're writing fiction you first sort of have multiple idea formats and all of that and then that's only 20% perhaps of the whole process of writing a book or anything and then there is this 80% which is just really back breaking grinding work which you do you write every single day and then you kind of redo pieces which is what nobody talks about and everybody just looks at that first part of that 20% and thinks that wow it's great fun you can just go all over the place but it's really not like that absolutely you talked a little bit about you know the benefits and the compensation pieces are there other differences that you would see you know because in the full-time employees you have stock options you have all kinds of long-term gains that people think of that their increments are you know if the company does well that's sort of addressed whereas the gig worker really is doing all of that by themselves so does the compensation and benefit process for working with gig employees differ in terms of even the way that you pay them it does drastically differ from ongoing payment methods to a gig worker who generally gets paid a fixed amount of contract assignment or paid in tranches of how the transaction milestone is achieved the differences are vast as I stated to you the premium of the payment itself is so vast that it makes it very difficult to compare apples to apples so for a gig workforce pattern based rewards program the focus is a lot more on instant gratification the focus is a lot more on real-time payments and the focus is a lot more on creating benefit frameworks which are real-time and which help in the enablement of the project at hand so right from a meals enablement effort which may seem very sundry for a full-time worker in different formats to making sure that a gig worker is taken care of at the time when they are impaneled with us those are the kind of benefits which make it a lot more short-term focused a lot more real-time focused a lot more individual focused whereas in a larger format rewards are taking care of the ecosystem of the employee as well as I stated so if I were to sort of take a broad design principle I would say that in the full-time employment it's pretty much for at least a large category of employees it remains the same with very little you know there's a pay for performance which may vary but in case of the gig artist that range could be dramatically different so it's very very sharp differentiation depending on the talent and the marketability and the brand and it's a number of other so the decision-making points and principles really seem to be around intangible elements yeah and is it hard to evaluate these intangible elements and come across as fair or are people comfortable saying that that's how it is I think it's very difficult I would honestly you know call out that the intangibility of premium that I attached to the personal brand the skill, the experience and the expertise that somebody gets on the table as a gig worker is far more dependent on the work that you've put behind which makes it perceptive decisioning as compared for a full-time employee where in some many years of data facts are giving me a trend of how good you are or consistent you are what's your stability factor and therefore helps me continue to improve the time value for money so those variations exist but at the end of the day in this industry the evolution has enabled that the premium of being a gig worker is so high that I don't think people will take a U-turn to take a satisfactory stable I would say a lot more secure full-time employment just for you know the sake of it they will rather still put in their risk on their personal brands continue to do assignments which are diverse continue to bring in a lot more focus on enabling and sharpening their skill and therefore get the premium which the industry calls out for would you say that when you think about this particular industry or gig workers in general do they also get regulated by you know terms of contract which could be for instance a full-time employee is bound by the terms and conditions of work so you know if there's a violation of any of that whether it's financial misappropriation or misbehavior with a colleague or all of that you would take action is that even possible with a gig worker or are they immune from this kind of a scenario I would say they are not immune to it in fact this is where the spirit and the letter comes together our employees are as much bound by the code of conduct which the organization permeates as its foundation as much as anybody we get on board as a gig artist to come and work with us the ethos goes behind the fact that they need to be culturally assimilated with what I stand for as a brand so therefore if you are a gig worker does not mean that you will go scot-free by not enabling the code of conduct and the spirit of transparency and integrity in the organization you will as much be accountable in fact our work contracts for gig workforce equally include such stringent clauses around code of conduct around workplace fairness practices as much as they do for full-time employees in one place wherein the responsible employer has to make sure that all size all generations all workforce types have to abide by that base foundation of what you stand for as an organization in the full-time employees there is a great need to build in a formal process of ensuring inclusion and diversity is that something that even works in the area of the gig artists it does in fact in the recent times it has become more and more prevalent just as an example in our diversity and inclusion agenda at SPNI one of our clear inclusion agenda is centered around inclusion of content our content has to be inclusive of the 1.3 billion people who watch it in India who watch it across the globe the diaspora are to make it inclusive for them to watch the content of their type their interests so the inclusion agenda is as much prevalent in any format that we work for the second biggest element is the element of equality of millennials, generations gender and so on when we put a gig format together the diaspora is diverse I have to make sure that my pattern of content which I'm preparing is not alienating from one towards the other and it's as inclusive as possible just as an example one of our recent shows which has been launched in set our flagship channel the lead character is actually a dumb and deaf person it's promoting an inclusive practice to say that irrespective of how differently abled you are but you're still capable of delivering value back so the show circulates around that inclusive practice and that's a lead actor it's a lead actor just in conclusion if I were to sort of highlight that if you were sort of advising people who have not yet started working in a very big way with the gig workforce what are some of the ways in which they could get started what are some of the things to start looking at and what are are there sections which are easier to get started with is it a particular department where you could start work or is it the entire organization or is there a sector which is easier to work with what would you say I think the sectors one should look at starting with my own I would be honest with you Mother Maria please join us media and entertainment industries fun employment opportunity and gig workforce format as well followed by that technology consulting many others are following the lead so I wouldn't alienate one industry over the other having said that if you are keen to adopt a gig workforce format for yourself whether you are working parent who wants to move to a flexible style because in your life your child is your priority or whether you are somebody whose pursuits are beyond and larger than following a nine to five rigor or you are somebody who has seen it all in life and has spent 40 years in corporations but now wants to give back through their expertise and you know experience the gig workforce format is for you the few callouts which I would have if somebody wants to start with and I'm going to pass this question back to you as well because you've been experiencing it for the past few years is one invest in your personal brand it starts with investing in your personal brand in the work that you're doing creating a niche for yourself what you stand for because as a gig worker you would be looked out for that skill for that niche expertise that you bring to the table secondly be explicitly out there to talk about your point I say it in relation to personal brand but I also state from a perspective that you have to be authentic in a gig workforce format you can't be a pretend worker a gig worker has to be authentic to their skill and therefore what they bring to the table and last start practicing self initiation based motivation to work as compared to a manager telling you this is your annual goal and this is what I want you to do so these are some snippets of my learning which I would pass on to anybody who's listening to our video cast today but my question still comes back to you no absolutely not I'm not going to leave you on this one okay so what's your question for me what would your advice be to anybody who wants to enter this space well I would you know I would think that the first important pieces to really you know of course hear this term a lot that you know chase your passion and all one of the pieces I would think is that you know until and unless you have understood all the elements of the CXO suite which means you understand a little bit of finance you understand a little bit of marketing you understand how you can be discovered you understand how to sharpen your skills you've built a nice network there are lots of things that you should really think and prepare for if you are really going to spend a lot of time in the gig workforce I think that would be my first learning that I would sort of really think about the second pieces you know I would agree with what you said that you know being there in the social media articulating your point of view and value adding back to people in many ways I would think that a gig worker is in some sense working in that freemium model you know there's a certain amount of work that you do for free so you know what the content that I put on to LinkedIn for example I always say that you know feel free to use it I give it away yeah I don't put any IP or anything of that sort it's given for anyone so if you follow me on LinkedIn use that that for me is also a way to put out my point of view the kind of areas that interests me the kind of work that I'm doing but I also think that in addition to it you know the ability to work with very diverse set of people to get your ideas leveraging social media not just for promoting yourself which of course you know you do it through the content that you put across but I think even more important and I would say that's 80% of the way you use social media is to be able to listen for ideas listen for skill building listen for who are some of the people who are really doing path breaking work and really connecting up with them so in that sense if you think in a fairly boundary less manner it's a great place to be so that's been the best part about you know being a gig worker for myself as far as I'm concerned that's what I would say many of us are literally looking forward to following a suit and aim and someday I hope we shall but till then I think we'll continue the conversations on it and keep learning from each other Thank you so very much I think it's been incredible to know about you know the world that you live in and it's in some sense you know the world that you describe is a shape of the way the world is going to be in future you know as organizations life is getting shorter and human beings are actually living longer I think and at some point of time or the other we are all going to experience what it means to be part of the gig workforce so I hope what we spoke about today is going to help you to understand both what it means to be a gig worker and two how to get started to really think about your talent strategy not just from a full-time employees point of view but also from the point of view of gig workers to think about when you do your long-term planning to think about the number of people you are going to employ but the portfolio of skills you know short-term long-term how do you sort of go about doing that all of that actually can be built in so with that I hope you have enjoyed this conversation look forward to hearing back from you Thank you