Doing their work everywhere and at any time – in a cafe, at home, or even outside. There is no need to stay in the office, the main condition is to have a laptop and the Internet connection. This is how freelancers (teleworkers), or as they are also called, “free artists,” work.
The new model of relationships between an employer and employee is in many ways more progressive than the classical model of working in the office. Moreover, in Ukraine. Only past year, according to the data of the world’s largest freelance stock market Upwork, Ukrainian “free artists,” with over 120,000 being registered at the stock market base, have earned over 60 million dollars and were the first ones in Europe.
Owners of businesses and IT companies told about the advantages of working at the Ukrainian market of freelancers and the art to start everything from scratch at a conference “Working SMART.”
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“The lack of a schedule and the freedom to choose a working place is what has always motivated people to work as freelancers,” Olena Pedai says. Apart from working as a freelancer, Olena is also a co-organizer of the Urban Fest. The event was held for the first time in the end of February and continues to gather caring Kyivites with a purpose to show them the methods and possibilities to independently improve the space of the city. “Freelance is a great aid for a person who wants to be socially active,” Pedai says.
The most popular free professions include programmers who work for the foreign market, copyrighters, content managers/administrators of websites, designers, and SMM specialists. However, Ukrainian freelancers are still lacking knowledge, the head of the newly created Association of Freelancers of Ukraine Maria Savchenko is sure. “The market needs professionals who will work with high quality, no matter in what part of the world they are located. Not all of them are professionals. There are young people who become freelancers from the start. But they lack communication, negotiations, project development. Various problems may arise. Therefore someone has to teach them,” Maria Savchenko told The Day.
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She says that the community of freelancers, on the one hand, must increase the awareness of teleworkers about the risks and advantages of such work and improve their qualification. On the other hand, to establish contacts between high-qualified specialists and employers. “I think there will be more businessmen among young people. For freelancers have a possibility to create a team that would work with absolutely different projects and could do various kinds of work. This is very interesting and developing. Moreover, the geographic boundaries of the market will be erased,” Maria Savchenko says.
Today there are not many startup businessmen among freelancers. “Whereas we have on the whole 0.7 percent of technological businessmen, their number is 10 times higher among freelancers,” co-founder of the first Ukrainian business accelerator GrowthUP Denys Dovhopoly says. But according to him, startups among freelancers are rather exclusion than the rule.
Yet Dovhopoly gives three main recommendations to those who decide to start a business. “First of all, if you’re an innovative businessman, look for problems. Secondly, solve them. Thirdly, be in a right environment. It will help you, as a future employee, with access to financing and expertise,” Dovhopoly sums up.
Namely for this reason the place of holding the conference is not accidental – this is the smartworking SAD (Garden), which has been recently opened in the capital. It differs from usual co-workings because apart from a working place, freelancers can receive legal and bookkeeper’s support here, a client base, as well as develop their own project with a personal project manager. They also can feel like in a green garden, in spite of the winter cold and the fact that the smartworking has been established in a former printing plant.
“Appearance of such clusters on the whole will help us overcome a number of barriers and will help business activity more. If previously only 0.1 percent of population could start their own business, today this figure may increase to 1 percent,” the co-founder of the project SAD Volodymyr Demianenko explains. He adds that such kind of clusters also give impetus to motivation. “When you work for yourself, you often lack certain knowledge. And if you have an opportunity to constantly be charged with energy and knowledge from your environment, this will make your work more efficient,” Demianenko says to The Day.
