Whereas employees are employed for shorter and shorter periods, the length of the first assignment contract of independent professionals and secondees is actually increasing. Thereby, the percentage of assignments that are extended after this first contract is also growing. This is evident from the latest Talent Monitor of labor market data specialist Intelligence Group and HR - tech service provider HeadFirst Group.

Fixed more mobile, flex more sustainable
The number of years people are employed by the same organization is decreasing rapidly. On average, a person works for an employer for less than five years. Compared to 2015, this is a decrease of more than three years, when people stayed with an employer for an average of eight years. Looking at the flexible labor market, the average duration of an initial assignment of independent professionals and secondees was 205 days in 2022. For secondees, this was just slightly lower at 202 days, while for assignments of independent professionals it was a week longer at 209 days. For both groups, initial assignment duration has been increasing since 2020 and is now almost 3 weeks longer on average.

Geert-Jan Waasdorp, director and founder of Intelligence Group: "In the trade-off between permanent and flex, the differences in duration are getting smaller, but the differences in risk are getting bigger. Especially because of the greatly increased mobility and absenteeism. In some cases, job security for employers has become greater at the point when they turn to the flexible labor market than when they fall back on employed people, with or without a permanent contract."

Assignments increasingly extended
In addition, more than the majority of assignments are extended, with an average extension often around 6 months. In 2020, 63 percent of assignments were extended. That dropped to 56 percent in 2021, before "recovering" to 61 percent in 2022. Extensions, especially more frequent ones, also show an increase in the length of extensions compared to previous years.

Assignments - with or without extension - averaged 395 days in 2020. This duration is getting closer to the declining average of the duration that a young person up to 25 years is employed by an employer, which is now well under three years. Marion van Happen, CEO HeadFirst Group: "Never before in our Talent Monitors have we seen permanent and flex come closer together so concretely AND never before have we seen that substantiated, data-driven Total Talent Management is not just a trendy term, but a business-critical necessity."

The full Talent Monitor 'Fixed is getting more mobile and flex is getting more sustainable' can be read here.