Why Comcast Encourages Employees To Take on Gig Work

Key Takeaways 

• Comcast’s internal gig marketplace fosters rapid mobility and surfaces hidden talent, enabling employees to maintain job security while building skills.
• Demand is real: New Indeed data shows that mixed roles are most appealing to candidates and that using mixed workforce models boosts business performance.
• To make workforce agility sustainable, creating a sense of inclusion for both traditional and agile employees is essential.

If your teams can’t pivot, your talent roadmap is already dated. 

In forthcoming global research from Indeed, 64% of job seekers and 87% of employers say workforce agility is important to achieving their professional goals. The survey defines “workforce agility” as expanding the mix of flexible employment arrangements, including gig and contract roles, interim or fractional positions, career switching, remote “digital nomad” jobs, AI-augmented positions and job rotations. 

And for both sides of the employment funnel, it’s paying off.

Job seekers say mixed roles are the most appealing job type globally (71% net appealing), ahead of traditional (62%) and agile/nontraditional (57%). Meanwhile, employers are seeing better outcomes, with 74% agreeing that combining agile and traditional roles enhances business performance.¹

At Comcast, talent teams are embracing workforce agility by offering employees temporary roles to upskill and source internally. We sat down with Aryeh Lehrer, Comcast VP of Talent Acquisition and a member of Indeed’s talent executive community Leadership Connect, to learn how the company’s internal gig pilot program has taken off.

Aryeh Lehrer, Comcast VP of Talent Acquisition

Using Skills to Build Career Ladders Lattices

At Comcast, skills are a “core talent currency,” which is where the internal gig marketplace comes in. Lehrer describes it as employee “try before you buy” opportunities to gain exposure to different segments of the business and leverage skills outside of their current roles. Leaders post internal‑only, time‑bound projects and, with their manager’s approval, employees can volunteer for opportunities while maintaining their current role.

“We view workforce agility through the lens of how our workforce evolves with the business. Rather than focusing on job titles or years of experience, we look at the skills people have and how those skills align with our future workforce plans,” Lehrer says. 

That skills-first reframing turns careers into lattices, not ladders. Leaders map their workers’ current skills and adjacencies to identify gaps worth closing through upskilling and exposure, while employees get to engage with different areas of the business and stretch their skills. 

This design lowers risk for those who may want to assess different career options and surfaces readiness signals you rarely get from resumes, Lehrer explains. “The program gives them exposure to potential pathways they might not have even been thinking about,” he says.

And that security matters. Unpredictable annual income is job seekers’ top barrier to agile work — 23% of Gen Z, 31% of millennials, 37% of Gen X and 34% of baby boomers cite it as their main concern in our survey. 

Instead, internal gigs provide a safety net for workers to experiment and strengthen adaptive capabilities, which works out for business. “More opportunities lead to more ways to advance and expand skills, and that can lead to higher retention,” Lehrer points out.

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Your 10-Point Plan for an Agile Workforce Strategy

Here are the essentials we identified in Comcast's internal gig marketplace that make it successful — so that yours can be, too.

1) Define purpose and scope

Write down your definition of the “gig” (time‑bound, scoped, measurable). Start with a few priority functions and adjacent skill clusters.

2) Codify eligibility and approvals

Require sign‑off from people managers and set capacity guardrails. Having a set of criteria can reduce ambiguity and enable fair, scalable decisions.

3) Mitigate risk by keeping roles intact

Create an environment of psychological safety by allowing employees to remain in their original roles while trying out gigs. Time-bound assignments make re‑entry seamless.

4) Pair gigs with learning and shadowing

Add short, structured shadow rotations to allow participants to understand the full scope of roles and responsibilities, clarifying fit and accelerating informed mobility.

5) Build your internal talent map

Inventory your workers’ skills, adjacencies and overlaps to improve internal matching and shorten time‑to‑fill for gigs.

6) Optimize intentionally with AI

AI can be very effective in streamlining tasks like discovery, shortlisting and scheduling. At the same time, it’s important to be transparent about AI’s role in the process and ensure final decisions rest with human leaders to protect candidate trust. 

7) Hard‑wire communication

Lehrer notes, “Communication is critical: the gig leader and the employee’s current leader must stay aligned so nothing moves forward without full awareness.” Schedule regular check‑ins between gig leaders and people managers to share status updates and avoid surprises.

8) Set clear guardrails

Be explicit about conflicts of interest and performance expectations for the gig position and the original role’s responsibilities.

9) Measure business and people outcomes

Employers can track a number of factors to monitor the success of their gig program: participation, project completion rates, cost savings on external hiring, gig‑to‑role conversion rates, employer value proposition (EVP) lift and participant retention.

10) Scale with inclusion

Embed belonging and recognition practices from the start so that temporary gig workers — or any employees in nontraditional roles — don’t feel sequestered. Three-quarters of employers say inclusion between traditional employees and agile talent is essential for long‑term success.¹

Workforce Agility Fuels Resilience and Growth

Looking forward, the transition to blended workforces can be quite sustainable: more than 6 in 10 job seekers say they would consider mixed roles for their future careers.¹

As Lehrer asks, “Where do those skill sets allow for people to maneuver within the organization? And how do those play into our long‑range plans?” Answer that — with structure and clarity — and agility becomes your organization’s accelerator for resilience and growth.

For more talent management tips, keep an eye out for The Indeed Global Talent Report: How Workforce Agility Drives Business Results, coming to /LEAD in spring 2026. In the meantime, sign up for our newsletter to receive the latest data and insights straight to your inbox.

¹Indeed Survey with YouGov 2025, Total N=7,317 job seekers and 2,966 employers. Fieldwork dates: 18th July - 5th August 2025.

Indeed provides this information as a courtesy to users of this site. Please note that we are not your recruiting or legal advisor, we are not responsible for the content of your job descriptions, and none of the information provided herein guarantees performance.
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