Yes I agree, well functioning teams are much more productive than an individual working alone.
I'm a team player through and through. I work significantly better with people than without them. However that doesn't mean to say that an employment contract is the best way to create a team. People naturally form teams all the time, even self-employeed people. Some are informal supportive relationships, and some will be under contract. For example, if a self-employeed person hires a business coach, they are forming a team to improve business value and productivity.
I'm sure that there are downsides to the freelancer model I propose. It has the danger of being very transactional if done in the wrong way and people's feelings and employment rights could easily get trampled on (of course that happens now too). One of the biggest headaches in HR is turnover because recruiting can take months due to notice period times and it takes 3 - 6 months to get the average employee up to speed. I agree working on big complicated projects with freelancers could potentially be fraught with difficulties. But then if it was a valuable, inspiring project that was run well and for the highest good of all, wouldn't the majority of freelances want to stay till completion anyway? The reason we have so many dissaffected workers is that many companies have bosses in ivory towers that don't understand life on the ground floor and vice versa.
|