Stop Paying for Ghost Time

The Future of Work Is On Demand

Employers, listen up! The old employment model is broken. We take on full time staff with open ended contracts. We agree to pay them year-round. We pay for their annual leave. We cover sick days. Then we try to keep them engaged and productive for the rest of the time. We have created a strange illusion of full-time work.

The Office for National Statistics keeps telling us that UK productivity is stagnant. We hear the usual chatter about economic factors, but we gloss over a glaring truth. We keep paying for twelve months but we only get ten months of genuine output. Then artificial intelligence joins the party and suddenly half the tasks we used to allocate to a person can be automated or replaced with software. Everyone can see there is a mismatch. Why are we paying for a full year of labour if AI can handle half of it.

If it was just about cost, we might find a way to muddle through. But morale is on the line. Employees twiddle their thumbs when the workload thins out. They resent being in their desk or in their home offices for the sake of appearances. Then they need time off and are absent for reasons beyond our control. The result is a permanent strain on budgets and an underlying sense of frustration on both sides. It is a losing game all round. Businesses pay for dead time. People feel bored unchallenged and stuck.

That is why we need an on-demand approach to employment. This is not the old style outsourcing that means low-cost call centres and a disengaged workforce. This is about accessing skilled professionals who split their hours between multiple clients. They use AI to handle the repetitive stuff and focus on the tasks that require human judgment. Their output soars because they fill their schedule. Their job satisfaction rises because they have variety. Most importantly the employer only pays for what is needed. No more covered sick days. No more wasted annual leave budgets. No more indefinite open-ended contracts that drain resources.

Yes, there is a risk. We must move away from the myth that we should keep every role in house forever. But this change does not mean throwing people on the scrap heap. It means freeing them from a system that no longer makes financial or practical sense. It means giving them the autonomy to work across different projects making full use of their skills. It also means employers can scale teams when a major project arrives and scale back when it ends. Costs become more transparent. Productivity is easier to measure. Employee engagement is no longer forced into an outdated nine to five patterns.

We can see the momentum growing. We can see AI automating roles at a staggering pace. We can see year upon year of dull productivity metrics telling us the old approach is not working. That is why it is time to stop paying for lost time. On demand work is the future. We can either adapt now and unlock real value or ignore the warning signs and watch our costs skyrocket for ten months of actual output. The choice is clear, and it is overdue. Let us change the rules of employment and make the numbers work for
everyone.

References Office for National Statistics Labour Productivity Release 2023.