This new flexibility brings businesses and candidates closer together

This new flexibility, which combines flexible working arrangements or roles – including casual and contract work, temporary or part-time assignments – with career changes, remote working in ‘digital nomad’ mode, AI-supported roles and job rotation, helps bring businesses and candidates together, particularly among younger generations – Generation Z in particular – who do not necessarily regard a stable, permanent job as a priority and are also willing to consider forms of self-employment. This trend emerged from a report by Indeed and YouGov, which surveyed nearly 3,000 employers and over 7,000 workers across Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, India, Italia, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Singapore and the United States.

According to Gianluca Bonacchi, Talent Strategy Advisor at Indeed, in the ever-changing world in which we live, ‘we are forced to rethink the very concept of work by introducing an agile approach to workforce organisation. This new hybrid and dynamic system, capable of delivering benefits to both companies and workers, requires changes that may feel unsettling but are now essential for optimising business results. The ability to offer diverse ways of working becomes a strategic asset for effectively meeting the needs of different categories of workers, ensuring mutual benefits’. With artificial intelligence rewriting the rules at an unprecedented pace on the one hand, and workers’ expectations evolving on the other, organisational agility is bringing companies and candidates ever closer together. On average, globally, 87 per cent of companies state that having an agile workforce is ‘very’ important for their business objectives, and 64 per cent of jobseekers agree.

Looking at the sectors, those where flexibility is extremely or very important are construction and mining (93 per cent), IT (92 per cent), hospitality and catering (90 per cent), financial and banking services (89 per cent), and transport. The sectors in which companies plan to increase their numbers of flexible and non-traditional staff, on the other hand, are media, PR and marketing (59 per cent), IT (58 per cent), construction and mining (58 per cent), human resources (56 per cent) and retail (54 per cent)

Jobseekers in Italia are more receptive to flexible working than the global average. In fact, candidates and companies in Italia are slightly above the global average when it comes to adopting flexible working. The latest Istat figures on employment and unemployment (for June 2026) show that in Italia, over recent months, the number of people on fixed-term contracts – whilst still a minority – has continued to rise. According to the latest survey, there are 2,542,000 such workers (compared with 16,491,000 permanent workers), and their numbers are growing at a faster rate: June 2026 saw a 3.7 per cent increase on May 2026, a 7 per cent rise from January–March 2026 to April–June 2026, and a 1.3 per cent rise from June 2025 to June 2026.

Returning to the Indeed survey, 28 per cent of jobseekers identify primarily as flexible workers, compared with 21 per cent in the markets analysed. At the same time, 56 per cent of companies in Italia employ casual workers, compared with 53 per cent globally. For jobseekers in Italia, the main reasons for seeking flexible work are flexibility (30 per cent) and work-life balance (29 per cent). Companies are aware of this: 31 per cent state that one of the main reasons they hire casual workers is to meet employees’ demand for flexibility and autonomy. This contrasts with the global average, where companies are driven more by organisational flexibility (25%) than by responding to workers’ preferences (23%). Among all the countries surveyed, Italia is among the most sceptical towards AI. Seventy per cent of employers believe that AI benefits both companies and workers, 5 percentage points below the global average and well below countries particularly favourable towards AI such as India (89 per cent) and Mexico (87 per cent). Jobseekers are also wary: only 45 per cent say that AI is beneficial to both companies and workers. Furthermore, both groups are unconvinced by AI’s ability to steer high-earning workers towards flexible roles: only 37 per cent of jobseekers (compared with 44 per cent globally) and 60 per cent of employers (compared with 68 per cent globally) believe that AI is creating opportunities.