Your Freelancers are People, Not Invoices: Why Indian HR is Falling Behind

The "Shadow Workforce" Crisis

Right now, there is a "shadow workforce" running your company. They aren't in your HRMS, they don't attend your town halls, and they don't have company email IDs. Yet, they are writing your code, designing your campaigns, and fixing your supply chain. We call them freelancers, but we treat them like office supplies.

In most Indian organizations, a freelancer is managed by a "vendor list" in the Finance department. HR doesn't even know they exist until an invoice gets stuck. They are trapped in a cycle of delayed payments and zero engagement. This "use and throw" mindset isn't just disrespectful—it’s about to become a massive legal and strategic liability.

The Legal Wake-Up Call: India’s New Labour Codes

If you haven't been tracking the Code on Social Security (2020), your HR strategy is already outdated. For the first time, the Indian government has officially defined "gig workers" and "platform workers."

The law is shifting the burden of responsibility onto the employer. Soon, companies will likely be required to contribute 1–2% of their annual turnover to a social security fund for these workers. You can no longer just hire someone over a WhatsApp call and pay them via a petty cash voucher. There are now digital registrations (UAN), statutory filings, and classification audits to handle. If your HR team is already overwhelmed by full-time staff, who is going to manage this new "legal mountain" for your external team?

Strategic Steps: How HR Can Take Control

To survive this shift, HR needs to stop viewing freelancers as "temporary help" and start seeing them as a Liquid Talent Pool. Here are four actionable policies you can implement today:

1. The "24-Hour Onboarding" Policy: Create a digital-first onboarding track specifically for contractors. If it takes a freelancer two weeks to get system access, you are wasting money.

2. Unified Pay Terms: Work with Finance to ensure freelancers are paid within 15 days, not 90. Treat their "paycheck" with the same urgency as employee salaries to build loyalty.

3. The "Alumni & Gig" Portal: Build a private database of every high-performing freelancer you’ve ever used. When a new project starts, HR should be able to "pull" from this trusted pool instead of starting a fresh search.

4. Inclusion Mandates: Invite long-term freelancers to key Slack channels or project briefings. If they don't understand your "Why," they will never deliver high-quality "What."

Why You Need a Chief Freelance Officer

The complexity of managing this—balancing legal compliance, procurement costs, and talent engagement—is too big for a junior HR generalist. You need a Chief Freelance Officer (CFO).

This person sits at the intersection of HR, Legal, and Finance. Their job is to ensure that when your company needs to scale, you have a "ready-to-work" army of experts who actually like working for you. In 2026, the best talent won't be looking for a 9-to-5; they will be looking for the company that is the easiest to work with. If your company makes it "painful" to be a freelancer, the best people will simply go to your competitors.

Dr. Siddhartha Pandey

CEO, HRD India