Introducing The Upwork Research Institute: Creating a Blueprint for the Future of Work

At Upwork, we're proud of the role we’ve played over the last two decades in shaping and changing the way independent professionals and their clients build relationships. From helping businesses reinvent their talent strategy to supporting professionals in jump-starting new careers, Upwork has been at the forefront of work innovation.

But over the past few years, the pace of change has drastically accelerated. Previously universal truths about work—like when, where, and how work gets done—are being rethought like never before. Leaders and professionals alike are navigating an environment where the only certainty is uncertainty.

We know there's a better way to work. And, we know companies and leaders want to create that better way, but lack the blueprint to do so. Enter The Upwork Research Institute.

A new era of research

The Upwork Research Institute, which officially launches today, is committed to studying fundamental shifts in the workforce, and providing business leaders with the tools and insights they need to navigate the here and now while preparing their organizations for the future. Through our proprietary data, global survey research, partnerships, and academic collaborations, The Upwork Research Institute will produce evidence-based insights to create the blueprint for the new way of work.

Here’s what business leaders can expect from The Upwork Research Institute:

• Global survey research and original whitepapers. With leading experts, academics, research firms, and prominent future-of-work organizations, The Research Institute will conduct regular global survey research to understand the attitudes and behaviors of executives across various industries, roles, and regions; unpack why and how organizations need to redesign work; and provide blueprints for success.
• Exclusive insights sourced from Upwork platform data. The Research Institute will analyze proprietary platform data on Upwork to uncover hiring behaviors across emerging skills like generative AI; evolving customer habits; the growing supply of independent talent and its impact on market dynamics; and more.

Similarly, we will produce regular reports, guides, and blog posts that dive deep into the challenges that leaders and professionals face in the workforce today. These include addressing the growing skills gap, fostering mutual trust between management and the workforce, and developing effective strategies for operating distributed teams.

Defining the Work Innovators

As part of its launch, The Upwork Research Institute today released a new report, Reinventing Work: Unveiling the Work Innovators’ Blueprint for Success, which analyzes what sets high-performing companies and leaders apart. In a year-long survey of more than 1,900 global business leaders—directors through C-suite level—the research identified three critical attributes linked to high-performing companies, referred to as “Work Innovator Companies.”

These companies, which were less than a quarter (23%) of those surveyed, had three distinct attributes. They each put new technology to work throughout their organization, open their culture to flexible talent, and create distributed team best practices.

A Work Innovator Company isn’t built overnight. These companies spent years creating the discipline to get ahead of the curve on new technologies, distributed work, and flexible talent models.

Beyond identifying the specific attributes that define these high performing organizations, The Upwork Research Institute also sought to understand what causes a company to become a Work Innovator. What actions are leaders taking to drive higher performance and innovate how work is done at their organizations?

To answer this question, our research team tested over 25 leadership actions that we believed could influence a company to become a Work Innovator and lead to higher performance¹. Of those 25, we found four distinct actions leaders can take that directly drive performance gains and enable work innovation at their organization:

• Using data and AI for decision-making across the organization. Data is a part of everyone’s role, and data democratization is seen as critical for insight-driven decision-making.
• Having strong internal operational practices that guide how the company communicates, collaborates, and orchestrates work across the organization.
• Having an inherent trust in one’s workforce to do great work, regardless of location or worker type.
• Possessing strategic orientation toward caring for workforce needs across the company’s talent ecosystem.

Why does this matter for leaders? In a landscape in which many leaders are questioning what to prioritize, what to preserve, and what to change, our research found leaders at these Work Innovator Companies to be:

• 1.6 times more likely to say they work on a highly effective team. Nearly 60% of high-performers say they work on a highly effective team (59%), compared to 36% of their lower-performing peer companies.
• 2 times more likely to be completely confident in their organization’s future. More than half (53%) say they are completely confident in their organization’s future outlook, compared to 27% of their peers.
• 2.5 times more likely to be satisfied with their organization’s current financial performance. More than half (53%) say they are completely satisfied with their organization’s current financial performance, compared to 21% of their peers.
• 2.5 times more likely to report a significant increase in their companies’ revenue growth over the last 12 months. More than a third (33%) reported a significant increase in their companies’ revenue growth over the last 12 months, compared to only 13% of their peers.
• 3.8 times more likely to have a well-defined generative AI strategy in place. Nearly half (49%) say they have a well-defined Gen AI strategy in place and have implemented it across their organization, compared to just 13% of their peers.

Download the full report at https://www.upwork.com/mc/documents/Work_Innovator_Report_2023.pdf.

Take the first step to becoming a Work Innovator

This research is the first step in our journey. Our vision is for The Upwork Research Institute to both serve as a best-in-class research hub, and also to become a community of forward-thinking leaders committed to shaping the future of work.

We invite others to embark on this journey with us, harnessing the power of these data-driven insights to transform their organizations and redefine the world of work. To stay updated on our latest research findings and upcoming events, visit https://www.upwork.com/research and subscribe to our newsletter.

Welcome to the new way of work—let's change work one insight at a time.

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¹ Stepwise regression methodology was used to determine the impact of 25 different company characteristics and leadership behaviors that could influence performance outcomes.