The University of Pretoria’s Ready for Work Programme, an online course free to students and young alumni, now includes a new module focusing on the latest employment trends to prepare students for the gig economy.

A gig economy is a work situation in which temporary positions are common and organisations contract with freelancers for short periods of time. The gig economy is becoming all the more important in an increasingly digital world that allows people to work from anywhere and at any time.

This allows people a more balanced and flexible life but has the downside of people not always having a stable income or corporate benefits. This new Ready for Work module teaches UP students how to embrace and access the gig economy in a responsible way.

The gig economy is set to become all the more important as the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) sets in because human skills will become more rare as artificial intelligence and automation will be able to do many manual tasks in traditional jobs for us.

Skills such as entrepreneurship, marketing, strategic thinking and using social media effectively will become the norm, since in the gig economy, people will be looking for work opportunities rather than a job. Having a positive attitude towards finding work that suits your skills in a variety of fields rather than simply being employed by one employer requires a personality that is not averse to taking risks in order to thrive.

Click here for more information about UP’s Ready for Work Programme.