Work in Progress with Matthew Knight
Chatting work, change and hope this week is Outside Perspective’s Matthew Knight- independent strategy partner, and Chief Freelance Officer at The Independency Co,a collection of projects supporting freelancers and those working with freelancers, including Leapers - supporting the mental health of freelancers; and Outside Perspective - the place for independent strategists. He lives in London with his two children, has a coffee addiction, and is slowly learning Swedish. You can say hello here.
What are you working on right now?
I officially “Do Too Many Things™, so it depends what mode you catch me in.
But the thing I’m most passionate about currently is Freelance Friendly - it’s a policy framework to help businesses be transparent about how they’re working with freelancers, and a roadmap to make improvements - so their independent workforce is better supported.
Our research into the mental health of freelancers shows that creative industry freelancers are struggling.
40% of freelancers saw a decline in their mental health last year, and much of that impact comes from poor working relationships with clients, as well as a lack of access to support infrastructure.
Hirers can (and should) play a part in better supporting the mental health of their freelancers, so we’ve built a set of stepped principles which clients can consider.
We’re on the hunt for organisations who hire freelancers, treat them respectfully, and want to publish a statement on how they’re working well with us freelance lot, so others can learn what good looks like.
My goal is to have 20 organisations by the end of the year signed up, and committing to doing better for their freelancers.
If you could change one thing about the world of work right now, what would it be?
Recognition that freelancers are a strategic driver of growth, not just a resourcing overflow.
I don’t like the term freelancer, because it carries lots of this baggage of last minute gap filling, or disposable commodity resource. We need to reframe working with independent expertise as a powerful way to bring external capability, augmenting your internal teams, accelerating your ability to deliver brilliant work. It’s such an amazing way to add deep specialisms, fresh perspectives and diversity of thinking to projects.
I think we’ll naturally see a shift towards more mission-based working over the coming years - the rise of AI within organisations will likely mean that much of the “business as usual” work will be automated or delegated to agents, and expertise will be brought in for the most valuable projects, rather than kept on staff all year round.
But if organisations want to work with the best people, they’ll need to recognise and respect the value of those experts, and treat them as such.
What’s giving you hope right now?
I’m excited by the huge explosion of new independent businesses, different models, collectives, coalitions, microstudios, networks, which all seem to be centered around the idea of doing good work, without the burden of complexity or heavy structures. It’s an interesting time for the creative industry, which is not dying, but being redesigned, and the legacy models of where talent lives, where work happens, and who owns and operates in those spaces has been long due a massive overhaul.
People’s energy and passion has been stretched thin over the last decade in some of the more traditional ways of working - so it’s lovely to see it popping back up, new shoots of energy cropping up.
The next ten years are going to be incredibly hard, I think - but there’s something powerful to see people who lead with curiosity, passion and purpose, who are committed to trying something different and new.
Work in progress is a celebration of the effort and mindset required to make real change exist.
The most important jobs are never done and great work happens somewhere in the messy middle, where its all too easy to give up. But optimism is a pragmatic choice we make daily, so if you’re navigating change and want a thinking partner along the way, explore how we work.