【 Li Xiang China 】 Standardize the healthy development of platform economy and work together to promote employment and entrepreneurship policies | Priority | Economy
The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China clearly proposes to implement the employment priority strategy, strengthen the employment priority policy, improve the employment public service system, and strengthen the employment assistance for disadvantaged groups. Employment is the greatest livelihood. Recently, the platform enterprise symposium held in Beijing clarified that the platform economy "provides new channels for employment and entrepreneurship" and should "strive to expand new employment based on platforms".
The potential of platform economy to promote employment is strong and resilient
As a new form of digital economy development, the platform economy's employment model includes various flexible employment forms such as online platform gig, outsourcing, internal outsourcing, crowdsourcing, labor, part-time work, hourly work, contracting, and sharing. It not only provides a large number of job opportunities and increases labor income, but also injects new vitality into the economy, society, and business model. Compared with traditional employment forms, it has obvious advantages.
The platform economy has strong capabilities in stabilizing employment and ensuring employment. In recent years, relying on digital platforms, the employment and entrepreneurship forms of workers have shifted from offline to a combination of online and offline. Digital platforms provide rich services such as information matching, supply-demand docking, pre employment training, and career development, playing an important role in providing new employment opportunities and optimizing employment structure. Whether it is ride hailing and food delivery services for labor-intensive positions, or online education, creative design, remote services, live streaming e-commerce for knowledge intensive positions, the demand for employment in the platform economy has significantly increased. The development momentum of China's platform economy continues to be released, and the roles of "stabilizers" and "accelerators" are increasingly prominent. They have played an important role in empowering high-quality economic and social development, and also provided new ideas and opportunities for solving employment and entrepreneurship.
Meet the diverse employment needs of job seekers. The platform economy has given birth to new industries and formats, and built an ecosystem for employment and entrepreneurship in the digital economy. Numerous digital economy enterprises use platforms as carriers, integrate resource elements, and gradually form replicable and promotable development models, expanding the demand for employment positions and enhancing employment and entrepreneurship capabilities. The platform economy breaks through traditional organizational boundaries and provides flexible and personalized employment models such as independent entrepreneurship, freelance work, and part-time employment, providing job seekers with diverse employment choices that enable them to showcase their abilities and find their own opportunities. Whether full-time or part-time, whether one person holds one or several jobs, as long as the time is properly arranged, there is no limit to time or quantity, and with skills, experience, and interests, one can seek diverse and flexible work and lifestyle platforms.
Promote the increase of labor income for employed individuals. In terms of labor remuneration settlement, the platform's employment remuneration is mainly in the form of piece rate and real-time payment, and some also adopt a fixed base salary plus performance-based income method. However, regardless of the method, their labor remuneration has significant characteristics of piece rate wages, which are based on piece rate and combined with performance to comprehensively determine labor remuneration, creating opportunities for workers to increase their income. According to the Eighth Survey on the Status of Chinese Workers, 70.78% of practitioners in platform economy related jobs have seen an increase in labor income compared to their previous jobs. Platform employment provides more opportunities and channels for workers to increase their income.
Promoting the high-quality development of platform economy employment still requires improving the level of public services
Unlike traditional forms of employment and employment methods, the platform economy, due to the wide distribution of workers, flexible employment, and strong mobility, has put forward higher requirements for the construction of the employment public service system and labor security system in areas such as labor remuneration distribution, occupational safety protection, vocational training, labor relationship recognition, and social insurance improvement.
Further improvement is needed in the level of employment public services. Firstly, the employment channels for the platform economy are not yet smooth enough. The imperfect intelligent mining and algorithm of employment public service platforms have left some employment information in a silent state, increasing the difficulty of matching supply and demand in the employment market; The unclear career development path of some newly added positions has to some extent hindered the attractiveness of platform economy employment and entrepreneurship. The second issue is that the career development and training system that matches platform employment is not sound enough. In terms of recruitment and onboarding linkage, digital training, certification full chain services, integration of pre - and post employment career development and career competency enhancement, building a comprehensive employment and entrepreneurship basic service, forming a platform economy talent supply side and demand side resource integration, meeting the diverse career goals and needs of individuals, stimulating the potential of job seekers to obtain high-quality job opportunities, etc., there is still a need for collaborative innovation of multiple subjects and all factors.
Further improvement in social security coverage is needed. Due to the flexible relationship between platform practitioners and platform enterprises, and the strong temporary nature of work, most platform enterprises directly sign civil relationship agreements such as outsourcing cooperation and individual business contracts with practitioners. In the traditional sense, the employee social security system and welfare benefits established as enterprise employees, including pension, medical, unemployment, and work-related injury insurance, cannot be simply applied to platform practitioners. If employees participate in social insurance as residents, due to low benefits, it is difficult to meet their insurance needs, resulting in low social security coverage and adverse selection.
Further improvement is needed in the identification of labor relations standards that are compatible with the platform economy. In China's labor legislation, the attribute of employment is used as the criterion for determining labor relations, and labor relations implement the principle of "one person, one position". In the platform employment model, this recognition standard is difficult. Due to the fact that practitioners may not necessarily belong to a certain platform, they may work full-time or part-time, resulting in atypical labor relations such as part-time labor relations, part-time labor relations, labor relations, intermediary relations, etc., which cannot be recognized according to traditional labor relations. This is accompanied by an increase in labor risks and disputes, and there is an urgent need to construct a new mechanism for mediating labor relations in new formats.
Guide the standardized development of platform economy and assist disadvantaged groups in better employment
Encouraging and supporting employment and entrepreneurship is related to the implementation of the employment priority strategy and providing fundamental and strategic support for the comprehensive construction of a socialist modernized country. The platform economy, as a new form of economy, has enormous potential in absorbing employment and alleviating current employment pressure. To support the development of new forms of employment, it is necessary to design and formulate a more flexible, adaptable, and inclusive employment security system.
Adhering to an inclusive and prudent regulatory mindset, we will continue to expand the development space of the platform economy. One is to further clean up and eliminate unreasonable regulations that restrict the development of the platform economy, and encourage innovation in business formats. Create a favorable business environment, comprehensively utilize policy combinations in areas such as finance and taxation, finance, talent, and intellectual property, and guide the platform economy to provide targeted flexible employment docking services to key groups. The second is to give full play to the advantages of Internet platform enterprises, through new technology means such as big data and artificial intelligence, break through the barriers of employment information connection, and improve the matching between supply and demand of employment opportunities.
Establish the labor subject status of platform practitioners and safeguard their labor enthusiasm. One is to promote the socialist labor concept of respecting and advocating labor, dispel prejudice against flexible employment on platforms, and enable platform practitioners to work with dignity and obtain dignity in their work. Second, adhering to the principle of employment priority, the government, enterprises and the Internet platform work together to build a career development channel for platform practitioners, carry out vocational skills training for flexible employees, and actively build a new ecosystem of digital talent training. The third is to encourage and support disadvantaged groups to find employment in the platform economy, and to help practitioners obtain stable and secure income through flexible employment through online and offline recruitment, online retail, and other means.
Innovate the governance concept of platform economy and standardize the healthy development of platform economy. Strengthen the supervision mechanism of the entire platform chain, optimize the institutional environment for promoting employment in the platform economy, and transform "standardization in development" into "development in standardization". One is to do a good job in the employment and labor security work of the platform, strengthen algorithmic governance, and implement relevant policies and measures on platform labor security. The second is to improve the standards for identifying labor relations between practitioners, platforms, and employers, explore criteria for identifying incomplete labor relations, and reasonably determine the rights and obligations of enterprises and workers. The third is to balance the relationship between innovative business models in the platform economy and ensuring employment, consciously fulfill the rights, responsibilities, and obligations between platform enterprises and practitioners, and achieve common benefits for the platform, enterprises, and practitioners. The fourth is to assist platform enterprises in optimizing employment security services, and improve the convenience and inclusiveness of employment services such as healthcare and social security.
Adhere to the equal emphasis on market leadership and government guidance, and enhance the ability of platform economy to drive employment. Both theory and practice have proven that market allocation of resources is the most efficient form. Therefore, firstly, we need to fully leverage market forces and solidly expand the scale of platform employment. Measures such as policy support, subsidies and tax reductions can be taken to encourage and guide platform enterprises to enhance their ability to drive employment. The second is to guide platform enterprises to build an open innovation ecosystem, enhance core competitiveness, and stimulate endogenous development vitality by building a multi-party collaborative governance system. Thirdly, we will support platform enterprises in strengthening their internal credit system construction, guide them to consciously abide by relevant laws and regulations on the platform economy, establish and improve mechanisms such as identity authentication, two-way evaluation, data regulation, and credit management, protect the legitimate rights and interests of all parties involved in the platform economy, continuously optimize the business environment, and create more high-quality employment opportunities.
