Communicating with Gig Workers in 2026

“They’re not employees” isn’t a comms strategy. It’s a risk statement.

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If your workforce includes gig workers, contractors, freelancers, delivery drivers, couriers, on-demand staff, or “talent we message via an app and hope for the best”, then congratulations: you’re running a modern business.

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You’re also running a modern comms problem.

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Because gig workers often sit in a strange no-man’s-land. They represent your brand to customers, they affect service quality and safety, and they can make or break busy periods. Yet they’re frequently excluded from the comms systems you’ve built for “employees”.

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And in 2026, that gap isn’t just a weak spot. It’s a genuine operational and reputational risk. It really is vital that your internal comms strategy caters for your gig workers just as well as it does everyone you call “a proper employee”.

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How many gig workers are there in the UK?

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Estimates vary depending on the definition, but one recent analysis suggests around half a million people in the UK currently work in the gig economy; roughly 1.4% of the total workforce.

Other broader estimates suggest millions engage with gig platforms regularly, including part-time drivers, delivery riders, freelancers and online workers, in the order of around 4.4 million people working on gig platforms weekly according to some research.

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Gig workers contribute significantly to the UK economy, with some estimates putting the gig economy’s contribution at around £20 billion annually.

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The size of the gig workforce means this isn’t niche anymore

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Even if your organisation isn’t a “gig platform”, the wider labour market is moving. McKinsey’s 2022 American Opportunity Survey found that 36% of employed respondents in the US identified as independent workers (about 58 million people).

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On the platform work side, a World Bank report (summarised by AP) estimates the number of gig workers globally could be as high as 435 million, and notes online gig demand grew by 41% from 2016 to early 2023.

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So, if your comms approach to gig workers is still basically “send them a legal document and wish them luck”, you’re not behind the curve. You’re behind the earth’s rotation.

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Are we doing it well in 2026?

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Some organisations are doing this brilliantly. Many are doing it, erm, accidentally. If they’re lucky.

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The most common weak spots look like this:

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Gig workers don’t get the same clarity as employees. They’re expected to “just know” how things work, where to get updates, or what “good” looks like. That’s how you end up with inconsistent customer experience and operational chaos.

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They don’t have an easy way to ask questions or raise issues. Or they do, but it’s a support black hole. When communication is one-way, problems don’t surface early, they surface as complaints, churn, or public backlash.

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Critical updates don’t reach them in time. Safety guidance, process changes, compliance rules, new tools, route updates, policy shifts… if your updates rely on email or intranet, you’ve basically built a comms system for people who aren’t invited to the party.

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And finally, gig workers often don’t feel listened to. That’s not just a “culture” issue. It affects retention, quality, and the willingness to go the extra mile. (Yes, even in gig work, discretionary effort exists. It just looks like better service, fewer mistakes, and fewer drop-offs.)

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Why it’s a risk to success if you get this wrong

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This is where internal comms becomes business-critical. Gig workers typically sit closer to your customers than your HQ teams do.

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That means poor communication shows up as:

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Inconsistent service and customer complaints. When workers don’t understand changes, they improvise. Customers experience that improvisation in real time.

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Safety and compliance exposure. Many gig roles are safety-adjacent by nature (driving, delivery, logistics, site work). Platforms like DoorDash have publicly discussed reducing in-app notifications and communications while driving as part of safety improvements, which tells you how seriously they treat comms design as a safety issue.

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Reputation and trust issues. There’s increasing scrutiny around platform work conditions and fairness. The International Labour Organization’s work on the platform economy highlights the broader debate around decent work, protections, and how platforms manage and communicate with workers.

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If gig workers feel unsupported or misled, you don’t just lose workers. You lose brand credibility.

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What good communication with gig workers actually looks like

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The goal is not to treat gig workers exactly like employees (legal frameworks and expectations can differ). The goal is to communicate in a way that makes them effective, safe, informed, and connected enough to do great work, without creating confusion, risk, or mistrust.

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Good gig-worker comms in 2026 has a few consistent traits.

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It is mobile-first by default. Most gig workers won’t sit at a desk opening long-form comms. The primary channel needs to work on a phone, quickly, on patchy data, in the real world.

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It is timely and operational. Updates should be built around “what’s changing” and “what you need to do now” rather than internal politics, project backstory, or corporate theatre.

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It is two-way. Not “we sent a notification, job done”. Two-way means workers can ask, respond, report issues, and feel heard, without needing a 45-minute support queue.

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It is designed for trust. Clear rules. Clear reasons. Clear consequences. No surprises. No “we changed it because we can”.

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Strategies that work in 2026

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You don’t need a perfect system. You need a reliable one. The best strategies usually combine a few core moves.

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Start with segmentation, not spam. Not every gig worker needs every message. Segment by region, role, task type, experience level, or risk category, then tailor updates. “Message everyone always” leads to noise, and noise leads to ignoring you.

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Build a “single source of truth” that isn’t buried. Whether it’s an in-app hub, a lightweight portal, or a knowledge base, gig workers need one obvious place to check for the latest guidance. Microsoft’s frontline comms guidance emphasises tailoring information and surfacing key resources in tools workers actually use. The principle applies here: make information findable in the flow of work.

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Make onboarding comms genuinely useful. Onboarding for gig workers often happens fast. And if you don’t provide clarity early, you’ll pay for it later in mistakes and churn. Uber, for example, provides an onboarding/learning course for drivers in some markets. You don’t need to copy that approach exactly, but the idea is solid: teach people how to succeed, not just how to sign up.

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Design messages for action, not reading. Your best friend is the “three-line rule”: what changed, why it matters, what to do next. If more detail is needed, link it, don’t paste it.

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Use “You said, we did” as a trust tool. Gig workers are often asked for feedback and then never hear what happened. Closing the loop is one of the fastest ways to improve participation, trust, and behaviour change.

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Tools that help (and the ones that quietly fail)

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If you’re communicating with gig workers through an intranet, please don’t. Nobody’s logging into that between deliveries.

What tends to work in 2026 is a practical stack built around mobile, speed, and clarity:

• In-app notifications and message centres (with controls so you’re not distracting people during safety-critical moments, as platforms like DoorDash have discussed)
• SMS for truly critical updates (but sparingly please, because overuse turns it into background noise)
• WhatsApp or similar broadcast/communities where appropriate (and governed properly)
• A searchable help centre or knowledge base designed for quick answers
• Short video or visual explainers for changes that are easier shown than described
• A real support pathway: live chat, ticketing, or a hotline that doesn’t feel like yelling into space

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And here’s the quiet truth: tools only work when the governance does. If messages are inconsistent, late, or contradictory, the fanciest app in the world won’t save you.

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What effective two-way comms looks like for gig workers

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Two-way comms with gig workers should be easier than it is for employees, not harder. They have less time, less context, and often less loyalty to your organisation (because they’re not “inside” it).

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Effective two-way comms means:

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Workers can raise issues quickly (safety, customer abuse, broken processes, app glitches) and see what happens next.

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There are structured listening moments, not just emergencies. Quick pulse questions inside the app, a lightweight feedback prompt after key workflows, or periodic listening sessions with representative groups.

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Feedback is visible. If you change something based on worker feedback, say so plainly. If you can’t, explain why. Silence creates stories, and those stories rarely flatter you.

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And you don’t punish honesty. If workers fear retaliation (less work, worse access, lower ratings), they won’t be candid and then you’ll end up making decisions with fantasy data.

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Real-world examples worth stealing from

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The best examples often come from platforms because their entire business depends on communicating with a distributed workforce at scale. But that doesn’t mean we can’t all learn (and/or cherry-pick) from what they have tried and tested.

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DoorDash has publicly described testing changes that reduce in-app communications while driving and introduce one-tap responses, explicitly linking comms design to safety and usability. That’s a useful reminder for any organisation with gig workers on the move: comms isn’t just a message, it’s an experience.

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Uber has written about improving in-app communication features (like streamlined chat interactions) to remove friction for drivers. Even if your workforce isn’t driver-based, the principle is transferable: make communication fast and functional inside the workflow.

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And at the broader policy level, the ILO’s recent work on the platform economy underlines that scrutiny around treatment, transparency and protections for platform workers is not going away. Communication practices sit right in the middle of that scrutiny.

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The bottom line

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If you utilise gig workers and you’re not communicating with them well in 2026, you’re building success on a decidedly wobbly foundation.

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The good news is that great gig-worker comms isn’t about being flashy. It’s about being useful, consistent, and designed for real life. Mobile-first delivery. Clear action. Two-way feedback. Visible follow-through. Trust over theatre.

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Do that, and you’ll see stronger performance, better retention, fewer risks, and a workforce that feels more like a community than a swarm of strangers.

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