Why go freelance?

During a recent HR conference, there was a good discussion about why people make the decision to 'go freelance'. We agreed that, though many people may have a more or less firm idea that the 'one day want to do my own thing', it is often some trauma - loss of a job, change of personal circumstances, etc - that triggers action.  In the near future we will feature articles about people who have become freelancers - so the 'freelance niches' section of the blog.

Do companies laying  people off do enough to help the move to freelancing?

It is a sad but inevitable result of continuous change - Schumpeter's 'creative destruction' - that firms will lay off people from time to time. This may be the result of a general economic downturn, or a change of competitive pressure in an industry, a merger and subsequent rationalization, or whatever. Whatever the cause, the result is that people find themselves out of work. Enlightened companies do provide help - usually in the form of an outplacement service - but with the underlying assumption that the laid-off workers will find a job in another company as a salaried employee. For many, though, this does not happen. As the 'compensation' funds dwindle in the laid-off worker's bank account, desperation will often force them to either take some lower level work than they are used to - wasting often many years of training and experience in their previous role - or seek another alternative, such as becoming a freelancer, or creating some other business. What a pity that this likelihood is rarely acknowledged by the firms laying off workers. A few lecturers on business start-up and freelancing, as a supplement or alternative to the placement service, could be of enormous benefit to those newly laid-off. If starting up a new business/becoming freelance is seen as a norm then more people are likely to consider it early in the process when they have more funds, more access to resources, and are still actively in touch with others who have been laid off.