brand logo

Digital transformation in self-employment 

15 Jan 2022

  • Revisit your business idea
By Priyantha Wedamulla  Self-employed workers are defined as those who work on their own account with one or few partners, or in a cooperative, holding the type of jobs defined as ‘self-employment’ jobs. The state of not working for an employer but finding work for yourself or having your own business can also be defined as self-employment.  The self-employed total population, as per the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates in Sri Lanka, was 41.52% as of 2019. While self-employment largely reduces joblessness in every country, some policymakers do not give it the attention it deserves. Many recent studies suggest that self-employment has tangible positive economic impacts not only on personal income, wage, and salary employment, but also on per capita income growth, reducing unemployment, increasing livelihood, and, to a large extent, ultimately leading to poverty reduction. Therefore, the self-employed or freelancers are rapid contributors to the economic development of a country while synergising their abilities with national economic outcomes. Sri Lanka’s Department of Statistics data indicates that the economically active population in the country was around 8.5 million in the first quarter of 2020, of which 65.7% were males and 34.3% were females.  The economically inactive population is about 8.2 million. Out of the economically inactive population, 26.1% are males and 73.9% are females. Sri Lanka’s labour force participation rate dropped to 50.2% in June 2020, compared to 51% in the previous quarter.  According to the latest reports, Sri Lanka's total population reached 21.9 million people in June 2020, while the country’s unemployment rate dropped to 5.4% in the same month. This is an immense challenge to the national economy, where nearly half of the population can be considered as dependents on the economy. In such a situation, improving self-employment and freelancers’ engagement in economic activities creates steady benefits to the national economy. Digital transformation Digital transformation, which is rapidly spreading and now being practised world over, has created a vital opportunity to increase self-employability and freelancer economic activities, including in peripheral countries.  The Internet of things (IoT) technology concept has created a massive opportunity for the self-employed and freelancers to engage with the economy at a high level, especially with social media platforms giving tremendous opportunities for everyone, even those who are not especially tech-savvy. The world now recognises Facebook’s impact on every scale of business as being incredible. Large-scale businesses have already been benefitting, while SMEs are steadily improving their usage. However, small scale businesses and self-employers or freelancers have not been engaged at the appropriate level with this social media platform. With over 90 million small businesses on Facebook globally today, it plays a key role in helping businesses of all sizes grow and creating jobs around the globe. With small business owners or self-employers being strapped for money, techno knowhow, and time, some social media platforms like Facebook commit to building tools that save time and money and enable them to focus on their business.  Today, such platforms are enabling people to manage and promote their business across the platforms through tools such as creating a business page, automated ads, audio-video content, new video editing tools, reach, engagements and appointments, social media optimisation, conversion techniques, business analytics, and intelligence as well.  Today, Facebook has more than 2.7 billion active users globally, making it an important potential platform for small businesses and freelancers whereas medium and big businesses in the world have already tapped into this potential.  Sri Lanka online In the Sri Lankan scenario, there are over 7.3 million Facebook accounts, and it claims to be the biggest single marketplace in the country. A Facebook business page can help connect people and their small businesses with potential customers and offer key information about the business, products, services, and upcoming events while delivering free and magnified messages to them about the available products or services.  There are many techniques that can be followed easily to increase one’s digital presence and online reputation while creating a Facebook Business page, which will enable sharing information about businesses including basics of the nature of the business, benefits, contact information about the business or the service that is being provided, and so on.  As more engagements are created with followers of the business, the more likely the business is to be noticed. It’s easy to create ads that drive results where Facebook gets involved instead of the business owner having to do the work.  Small businesses don’t always have the time or resources to gain marketing expertise whereas big giants do, but that shouldn’t prevent smaller operations from creating business pages easily along with ads that drive results as Facebook builds the page and automated ads on behalf of the business owner. At the same time, these can run easily on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger simultaneously since they are run by the same company. Automated advantages With automated ads, Facebook asks business owners a few simple questions about their business and goals and then it develops a customised marketing plan for free. Some of the most helpful features of automated ads on the platform help biz owners gear up their small businesses or freelance services to potential customers.  Up to six different versions of ads are given automatically. Facebook gives call to action buttons, text, image, audio, videos, activity-based options, and other creative content and details based on information from the business page and once the ad is active, it will automatically show the best-performing versions as well.  There is no requirement to have a business space where one has to pay rent and so on and one can handle everything related to one’s business from one’s home on a virtual base. The business place becomes one’s home whereas others have to pay rentals monthly.  Facebook allows small biz owners and freelancers to reach millions of potential customers and at the same time they can demographically, geographically, behaviourally, or psychologically scale and capture the target audience. It might be gender, age, or interest-based potential customers and a specific area can be targeted as well.  For example, if a business is supplying chicken BBQ, males above 20 years can be set as potential customers while the campaign can be limited to the urban council area or in a five km radius from the business location. Local businesses can set their ads to target customers within a 10-15 mile radius as well.  This option offered via Facebook business pages is the best way to gain access to a massive number of potential customers across one’s region or nearby, by giving the best exposure to the business while sharing contact details. More importantly, it’s the best way to reach people or potential customers in the community and convert them into customers. Business pages are rolled out with no costs until the biz owner starts paying for ads to get page likes, boost posts, and run sponsored stories or engage in more aggressive awareness spreading.  Target marketing Facebook ads are relatively inexpensive when compared to traditional print, radio, or TV ads, and on the whole, are 1,000x more targeted. New businesses will be able to use many techniques to reach and expand market size eventually.  Target marketing is the best solution to increase online presence and lead generation while boosting engagements and conversions. There are more abilities to target audiences by location, demographics, and interests while one can ensure impressive results by targeting ads via paid option.  When a business runs an ad on TV during a teledrama, there is no way of knowing for sure whether the ad targeted the right people at the right time for the business, whereas Facebook can target them precisely while providing live insights. This is an impact of target marketing from which businesses could benefit on a wide scale.  Enabling dreams In the local scenario, most State sector workers dream of another income source while doing their jobs. Meanwhile, over 50% of economically inactive people also dream of self-run businesses or freelance businesses. All of these people can now realise their dreams by benefitting from the developments of digital technology and expanding new income avenues.  Those who are self-employed work solely for themselves, and contract directly with clients could gain benefits as well. In a pandemic situation, people can revisit their business ideas paying attention to new business avenues like Facebook and ultimately build an income source. Meanwhile, these efforts will expand national economic activities and national production as well.  Self-employment may not be subject to tax withholding, so those who are self-employed are responsible for paying their taxes, which creates another revenue path to the Government. Self-employment or freelance services can also provide a great deal of job flexibility and autonomy while making money. Small and medium scale industries can be considered as the most important economic factor in the development of a country. They are considered the powerhouse of an economy. Therefore, it is important to engage these small and medium scale industries via a scientific programme to rebuild the shattered country and it is imperative to utilise an online platform in enabling them to grow. There is no doubt that this will enable taking the country’s production economy beyond national boundaries to the international arena.  Small and medium enterprises can streamline to play an important role in introducing a new product model to prevent possible monopolies and oligarchy in the market as well. The introduction of such an online-based production model is also important for industries such as agriculture, livestock, and fisheries, when implementing a programme to rebuild the shattered nation.  (The writer has a BA [sp], Pgd in Economics, MTEHM [UOC].)  


More News..