Elance Establishes European Headquarters to Meet Growing Demand

Online employment platform that helps global businesses and contractors work together takes steps to further support over 500,000 contractors and 179,000 clients around the world

Elance, the leading global platform for online employment, today announced it is opening European offices to provide better services and support to the region.

Elance helps businesses hire virtual staff on an hourly or project basis and also provides professionals looking to work online with access to qualified clients, a virtual workplace and guaranteed payment. The company currently has over 513,000 contractors and 179,000 clients globally across 156 countries. The European market is seeing extremely fast growth with more than 100% year-over-year increase in spend by European businesses on Elance in the last 12 months.

“The beauty of the Elance platform is that anyone can use the service no matter where they are in the world,” said Fabio Rosati, CEO at Elance. “Over half a million Elancers across the globe help clients get work done online. In order to serve Elance customers throughout the world, we need to expand our organisation. Our new European offices are the first step in this direction.”

Elance has appointed Kjetil Olsen to head up European operations for the company and he will be based out of the company’s new office in Oslo, Norway. Kjetil was previously Group Director of M&A and New Business at StepStone and has a wealth of experience in the recruitment and employment industries.

“Elance’s international success demonstrates that businesses now have the potential to work in a truly globalised way,” said Kjetil Olsen, Vice President, Europe at Elance. “We’re eager to find ways to spread awareness of Elance in Europe and beyond. At the same time, we hope to provide increased support for our clients and contractors wherever they may be in the world. With global economies experiencing severe difficulties, we believe the Elance model of empowering online workers and businesses to operate in new ways is more relevant than ever.”