In March 2021, Fred Lizée co-founded, in Nantes, the collective Away We Go, which today brings together around forty freelancers, mostly self-employed, in the tourism professions. “The objective was to pool our networks and expertise at the end of the Covid, to offer new services to companies in the sector, which are struggling to hire and are starting to take an interest in the self-employed”explains this product manager.
In recent years, groups of self-employed people like this have multiplied, under various statuses: association, simplified joint-stock company, cooperative… In a study published in January with the online bank Shine, the Collective platform estimates that there are 35,000 independent collectives in France to date, of which 10,000 claim to be such.
For Jean-Yves Ottmann, researcher in work sciences and scientific coordinator of the Missioneo Laboratory, the development of these new forms of work is linked to the“emergence of new professions of intellectual service, which have been structured thanks to digital tools”. Technology and development (24% of collectives according to the Shine-Collective study), communication (16%) and consulting are among the most represented sectors.
“Combat Loneliness”
For Yannick Fondeur, researcher at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts, who notably analyzed a group of freelancers in the digital field: “There are two objectives at the start, sharing mission opportunities, as well as teaming up and having complementary skills. » Jean-Yves Ottmann identifies three reasons: “political, with a rejection of wage labor and traditional organisations; psychological, with a desire to leave solitude; and pragmatic, to access resources and missions that you cannot access alone”.
Fifty-five percent of freelancers who joined a collective did so to “combat the loneliness of freelancing”, according to the Shine-Collective study. By coming together, freelancers also seek to pool certain expenses: invoicing, commercial documents, website, training, etc. “We recreated what we liked about the company and that we had lost when we became independent: working together, having people to rely on”says Louise Racine, co-founder of Lookoom, a group specializing in digital brand identity, which now brings together 200 people.
By assembling complementary skills, the self-employed can above all carry out more ambitious missions, previously reserved for agencies: 83% of the self-employed say they have joined a group to “work on bigger projects”. For example, building a site from A to Z for a client.
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