**7. Client organizations**

The primary concerns of client organizations revolve around Data and IT security, talent quality and availability, on-time project delivery, and project costs. For enabling I-GIG, clients may have concerns about how data privacy and confidentiality are maintained. The solution is to ensure appropriate rights, non-disclosure agreements, and robust IT security and infrastructure support enabled by the client and IT service organization, all of which can mitigate this risk. Many clients vet the quality of talent being inducted to manage the project delivery. The same practice may be continued for I-GIG working. However, IT service organizations may also provide assurances on on-time completion and quality standard of project delivery and circumvent the need for client interviews. The conventional models of project pricing (Time and Material, Fixed Price Project), may evolve to a more mature outcome-based pricing.

Additionally, value appropriation accruing from I-GIG working in the IT/ITeS organization may be shared with the client through changes in the master service agreements. This could incorporate a change in pricing for a certain percentage for I-GIG working in the client projects. With penalty charges enforced for project delays, a reduction in project costs is likely to be attractive to the client organizations since this model's risks would have been mitigated.

## **8. IT/ITeS service organization**

The onus of making the I-GIG successful largely rests on the IT/ITeS organization.


feedback and IT/ITeS organization managers can jointly review the performance after completing the gig assignment.

The reward system of successful completion may also be linked through the talent management system. This incentive may be separate from the annual variable pay mechanisms. Hence, the aspect of instant gratification would appeal to the I-GIG workers. Additionally, training needs and client and project inputs provide a robust feedback mechanism, enhancing individual motivation for continuous learning. Lastly, the platform may also be developed to publish the "rank" of the I-GIG workers, similar to Uber's reputation score. This may serve as a robust mechanism for improvement for the I-GIG workers. Clients may prefer high-ranking I-GIG workers for more prestigious projects.


HRM challenges of an internal digital gig working platform include the ease with which the employees can leave the platform and manage workers' supervision [10]. The sustainability of the internal gig platforms depends on workers to self-motivate and would be significantly enabled by a supporting ecosystem, which would address their motivations and needs. Internal gig workers' self-motivation is expected to address retention and supervision issues as employee motivation directly links to several desired organizational behaviors. However, the "Autonomy paradox" [25] continues with internal gig workers, who, while demonstrating autonomy over where to work and when to work, still they are bound to some level of new forms of control and surveillance, with the internal organization policies and client mandates, influencing who, what and how much of internal gig working can be supported.

If 5% of the employee base takes on I-GIG working, the direct impact of enhanced productivity and better utilization is likely to yield a 1% increase in EBIDTA. For the top four IT service companies in India, with revenues of \$122 Billion, this would produce a whopping \$ 1.2 billion increase in profitability. Assumptions on the monetized indirect costs of reduced attrition, continuous upskilling, higher engagement, and reduced recruitment costs yield a conservative improvement of 0.5–1.5% increase in operating profits. Based on the I-GIG program's success, organizations can further seek to reduce their contingent workforce and increase the permanent workforce utilization. This can address the variability in skill needs, also increasing the profitability for the organization.

While the above estimates have been made for the IT-ITeS industry, I-GIG as a concept could be applicable to all knowledge workers and industries where revenue is linked to client billing. Hence, consulting, audit, and knowledge management services could also benefit from adopting I-GIG. However, these organizations may not have well-evolved talent demand–supply matching IT platforms. The existing IT/ITeS service organizations may also productize their platform to make these available as a platform as a Service (PAAS) model. This could yield additional revenue to the IT firms.

Although some may consider using internal gig workers to be an alternative to the recruitment and selection of external labour, HR departments should still consider employee preferences in terms of their interests and motivations. Rather than relying on individual managers to determine which roles are appropriate for gig workers and which digital platforms to use, HR departments can develop policies or guidelines for what tasks are appropriate to I-Gig and which tasks are more suitable for full-time in-house employees.

## **Author details**

Debolina Dutta1 \*, Prem Mirchandani<sup>2</sup> and Anasha Kannan Poyil1

1 Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India

2 Human Resources - IT/ITeS Industry, Bangalore, India

\*Address all correspondence to: debolina@iimb.ac.in

© 2021 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

*The Emerging New Order: Exploring New Ways to Build an Internal Gig Employment System… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96731*
