From Compliance to Contractor Care: What the Flexible Workforce Wants in 2026

We’ve spent recent weeks listening: to our contractor community through a series of pulse checks, to clients, to suppliers across our network, and to the conversations happening at industry events. What today's flexible workforce actually wants is coming through, and we think recruitment, umbrella, and payroll organisations should take a look.

For anyone who hasn't come across us before, we’re Thrivr. A perks and wellbeing platform built specifically for the flexible workforce. Think savings, wellness tools, financial support, and more, all in one native app and web portal. We work predominantly within the recruitment, umbrella, and payroll sector, so the contractors using our platform are largely similar people sitting at the heart of your businesses.

It’s no secret that the compliance conversation has dominated the industry these past couple of years. The Fair Work Agency, the expanded definition of an Employment Business, new PAYE rules, JSL, the Statutory Sick Pay overhaul, Day One Employment Rights, it’s been quite the list, and getting it right has been the priority for everyone.

But as the Fair Work Agency put it themselves at a recent event, compliance is the floor, not the ceiling. The conversations that can win business are increasingly about service, value, and what the day to day experience actually feels like for a contractor. So we went straight to the source and asked our users. Through a series of pulse checks and surveys run over recent weeks, we put the questions directly to our user community, and what came back gives a useful picture of what today's contractor actually values. Here's what we'll cover:

1. What Our Contractors Told Us
2. What the Wider Data Tells Us
3. The Shift to Contractor Care
4. But Will They Use it if You Offer It?
5. The Wider Tech Stack
6. Escape the tick box
7. About Thrivr

1. What Our Contractors Told Us

The headline finding across our pulse checks is that savings remain the most valued part of any benefits offering, but the detail underneath that is where it gets interesting.

When we asked our community about their favourite discount categories, 73% named supermarkets among their top picks, with food/drink and travel/leisure close behind. Just as telling was how contractors told us they actually use their perks: many said they reach for the app most when they already know they are about to shop at a specific retailer or book a trip, rather than browsing casually. That’s a meaningful distinction for providers to understand. Contractors are looking for value at the exact moment they are already spending, which means timing and relevance matter as much as the breadth of the offering itself.

When asked what they like to do more specifically in their downtime, that intentional spending pattern lined up. Travel and getaways came out as the single biggest spare time priority, named by 47% of respondents, ahead of fitness and dining out. For a workforce that moves between contracts and often lacks the predictability of permanent employment, making the most of downtime between assignments clearly matters a great deal.

Wellbeing pulse checks told a slightly different story. Rather than one standout preference, the appetite was broad. We offered choices including virtual workouts, virtual meditation, nutrition guidance, and structured multi week wellness programmes, and half of respondents said they wanted all of them, with the remaining answers spread fairly evenly across each individual option. That breadth of demand suggests contractors are not looking for a single wellbeing perk to tick a box, they want ongoing, varied support that fits around an unpredictable working life.

In a separate, more recent pulse check that asked contractors to choose their single biggest personal development concern, managing stress and avoiding burnout topped the list, chosen by over half of respondents (55%), with career progression, leadership skills, and building self confidence close behind. The spread across all options was notably even, suggesting contractors are carrying pressure on multiple fronts simultaneously rather than one single concern rising above the rest. For a workforce without the structured progression paths or line management support that comes with permanent employment, this points to a real appetite for development focused benefits, not just financial ones.

2. What the Wider Data Tells Us

The wider UK workforce research shows a similar pattern. According to the 2025 Zest Employee Benefits Report, a staggering 62% of workers now say a good benefits package is the most important thing they look for in employment, and 63% would leave their current role if a competitor offered better perks. For umbrella companies acting as the legal employer, and for recruitment businesses whose reputation travels with every contractor they place, those numbers are hard to ignore.

The pressure behind them is real too. Research from Unum UK/Censuswide found that 69% of workers cite the general cost of living as their biggest daily concern, with 18% actively looking to move roles specifically to secure better pay or benefits. We can echo this as our most recent pulse check asked ‘What matters most to you in your life right now?’ and out of the varied lifestyle options we gave, nearly a third of all responses pointed to financial security.

Set against a backdrop where 47% of employees admit to quietly performing their duties while becoming increasingly disengaged, and where illness in the UK workforce currently costs businesses over £100 billion annually, the picture is one of a workforce under sustained pressure.

It’s clear that people are not asking for better benefits as a nice to have. They are asking because the financial and wellbeing pressures on the workforce are genuinely significant, and for contractors, unlike permanent employees, they primarily want benefits that provide financial stability, health security, and professional support, compensating for the lack of statutory rights.

3. The Shift to Contractor Care

Agencies are known to be highly protective of their candidates, so assuming baseline compliance is in place, what could actually tip an agency's decision? Increasingly, it’s the quality of the contractor experience.

A platform that combines savings, financial wellness tools, health & wellbeing and personal development support gives companies something tangible to point to when they talk about contractor care. It turns the relationship from a transactional payroll service into a holistic service that can keep contractors engaged, supported, and feeling valued.

The challenge many organisations face is bandwidth. When internal teams are already stretched, managing compliance, onboarding, the recruitment process, contractor queries and more, finding the capacity to communicate benefits clearly and consistently is genuinely difficult.

This is often where a specialist benefits partner adds the most value, taking on that communication so contractors stay aware of what is actually available to them, rather than perks going unused simply because nobody knew they existed.

4. But Will They Use it if You Offer It?

Even where benefits do exist, letting people know about them and keeping them front of mind is often its own challenge. Again, the Zest report found that while 93% of HR leaders believe their benefits information is communicated simply and clearly, only 18% of workers feel their employer regularly updates them on what is available. That gap is compounded by capacity: 32% of HR leaders say managing their benefits offering has become a manual, time consuming task, and 20% admit they are missing the mark on meeting employee needs simply because they lack the data to understand what their people actually want.

There is a structural reason this gap can be particularly pronounced for contractors. An estimated 80% of the global working population, around 2.7 billion people, are deskless workers, often without a company laptop. Despite making up a large percentage of the global workforce, historically only around 1% of enterprise software funding has gone toward tools built specifically for them.

Contractors can sit within this group, and it goes some way to explaining why our own insights found such a strong preference for in the moment access to perks. This has a practical implication that goes beyond just the technology choice. Choosing a platform built around the specific nature of your contractor’s working type is relevant. If their perks are not accessible and easy to use in their day to day life, will they use them at all?

How you talk about that platform matters just as much. If contractors do not know what is available to them, or find it too cumbersome to access, the value disappears. If contractors don't know what's available to them, they won't use it, so building accessible benefits into the heart of your proposition, and communicating it clearly and consistently, is what turns a good offering into one that may actually get used.

5. The Wider Tech Stack

None of this works if the technology behind it is clunky. Whether you are a recruitment agency, an umbrella company, or a payroll provider, the contractor experience reflects directly on your brand. Contractors are not thinking about the supply chain sitting behind their day to day life; they are simply noticing whether the experience feels good or it does not. As an industry you invest a lot into your technology and processes, so why settle when it comes to perks and benefits?

AI is increasingly part of this conversation too. From onboarding support to benefits guidance, the industry is beginning to explore where automation can improve speed, reduce admin, and surface better insights. Where it genuinely reduces friction, and improves contractor experience, is a positive development. Where it may fall short is customer service. Research shows that consumer preference for speaking to a real person has risen to 85%. A separate study found 79% of Americans strongly prefer interacting with a human over an AI agent.

The goal, then, is invisible efficiency. As far as the contractor is aware, there is no clunky handover; they are simply getting great service, bespoke perks, and a straightforward experience. Choosing the right provider and technology for your user base is vital, and whether you are supporting 500 contractors or 50,000, the technology needs to scale without adding friction. We would suggest considering the provider you choose within your wider tech stack and contractor journey.

6. Escape the tick box

It would be easy to assume that if every organisation has access to a similar benefits platform, the market simply flattens into a commodity again. But the platform itself is only ever the starting point. In our opinion, what actually differentiates is how organisations use it: how proactively they communicate, how well they tailor the offering to their specific contractor base.

Perks and benefits don’t have to be a tick box exercise. If the shift to actual contractor care is embedded within your service offering, then they can become a real tool to deliver insight, adapt to offer better service and address the real needs of your contractors. Consider your goals and objectives when exploring what perks and benefits you will offer, and how they will adapt as your business grows.

7. About Thrivr

Thrivr is a perks and wellbeing platform built for the modern worker and diverse organisations.

We're app-first and everything is designed to be genuinely easy to use, although a mobile optimised web portal is also available. Our perks cover savings, health, wellness, financial wellness, reward, fuel savings, and more.

We've built our tech to scale alongside your business, with integrations that connect to your existing payroll and systems, and branding and full support so the experience feels like yours. We do offer the flexibility to add your own suppliers and tailor the offering to your specific contractor base.

We understand that admin bandwidth can be a barrier to getting contractor benefits right, which is why our model is built around managed service. We can handle your perks related communication and contractor onboarding, which in practice means little admin for our clients. And when your contractors need support, they speak to a real person - straightforward, human customer service.

Whether you're an umbrella company looking to strengthen your value proposition, a recruitment business wanting to add more to your candidate journey, or an organisation looking to reward the loyalty of your clients and user base - if any of this resonates, we'd love to have a conversation.

Visit Thrivr's Partner Page