Disrupting the Shift Work Staffing Industry with Indeed Flex
In this enlightening session of the Shift Work Summit, James Terry, Chief of Staff at Indeed Flex, discusses how the company is revolutionizing the staffing industry. As an offshoot of the renowned job search platform Indeed, Indeed Flex has quickly established itself as a disruptive force in the shift work marketplace. Terry delves into the company's innovative approach to connecting businesses with temporary staff in industries such as hospitality, events, and light industrial work. He highlights how Indeed Flex is leveraging technology to streamline the hiring process and create a more efficient, flexible workforce solution for both employers and job seekers.
Watch the highlights and read the edited transcript below. Replay the full session here.
Indeed - A one Stop Shop for Permanent and Contingent Workforce
Why the Staffing Industry is Broken
A Job Seeker First Marketplace
Making it Easy for Job Seekers and Employers
How the Redeployment Rate Impacts No-shows
Gaurav Deshpande:
Welcome to the next session of the Shift Work Summit, everybody. It's noon. Pacific. 3 Pm. Eastern. We are about to get into the best session.
I'm your host, Gaurav Deshpande, and we are ready to welcome a brand that needs no introduction.
Indeed, the job search site that has been part of our lives for decades. And who can ever forget their amazing ads, where the employer says, "I need to find a new employee". and then there is the tagline, "indeed you do".
Indeed acquired a UK based shift work marketplace called Syft in March 2019, and Indeed Flex was born. Indeed Flex provides a marketplace for hiring workers in hospitality, in event industry, light, industrial, and a host of other industries. It's hard to show up at an event, to discuss shift work without mention of the Indeed Flex, another story of a business model that started on the other side of the Atlantic. And now it's rapidly expanding on the US side. The Syft founder, and indeed flex CEO Novo Constare was named as one of the top 50 leaders in the gig economy. Earlier this year.
Today I have the pleasure of welcoming his chief of staff at Indeed Flex, James Terry, to share how Indeed Flex is disrupting the staffing industry. James over to you.
James Terry:
Thanks so much. I appreciate it. I really do and thank you so much for having me at this event and for putting it together - appreciate the hard work by team HyperTrack. So I'm excited to talk a bit about the Indeed Flex marketplace today, and as I do it, as Gaurav had mentioned, everyone thinks about, indeed, and they think about what, Indeed is. And essentially, Indeed’s strategy long-term is to increase the value to the customer.
Indeed's actually going to be celebrating their 20th anniversary in just a couple of months now. And it's amazing to see how much the world of work and the way that people find jobs has shifted over the course of the past two decades that Indeed has has has been around.
Indeed - A one Stop Shop for Permanent and Contingent Workforce
“Indeed Flex has become a one stop shop for all of our clients with their needs when it comes to their permanent as well as their contingent workforce.”
And as they (Indeed) have continued to evolve their product. They originally started really on the left side of the screen, which is with search, click, and apply essentially a job board that they helped to aggregate jobs from a number of different organizations.
And as they're continuing to grow and evolve their product, they're trying to get closer to the hire with their interviewing system with their ATS (Applicant Tracking System) integrations. And ultimately, as they're starting to use a significant amount of AI to drive better outcomes of job seekers finding the right jobs they want and employers are able to access those workers. Those are some of the updates on Indeed. Now, let's talk about Indeed Flex.
And in Indeed Flex. We're actually taking Indeed's value proposition a little bit further. By going beyond the hire, including workforce management, time and attendance, payroll services so that we can essentially help our clients for the whole process. Indeed Flex has become a one stop shop for all of our clients with their needs when it comes to their permanent as well as their contingent workforce.
I want you to stop, pause and think about the staffing industry (about this this development)
Why we've had such growth of digital staffing apps over the past couple of years. It's really because the staffing market is broken. It's really hard, first off, to attract and retain quality workers.
According to Bullhorn, recruiters aren't able to find workers. And the workers they're finding are not skilled enough. And the onboarding process isn't really that great, especially when it comes to contingent workforce.
And so what we've actually found is that in the last decade there's been such a focus on permanent workers and the engagement scores that they have within their job. So we all know we we fill out these engagement scores about how happy you are with their job engagement scores have increased over the last decade to a record level. So permanent workers are extremely engaged. They feel like they have purpose and meaning at their job.
Why the Staffing Industry is Broken
"So workers in the temporary and contingent workforce space are turning over at a clip that we've never seen before. And really a lot of the reason is because, they don't have the type of control and choice that they're looking for when they're trying to engage with these employers."
On the other hand, the temporary worker turnover rate has increased by 49% over the last decade. So workers in the temporary and contingent workforce space are turning over at a clip that we've never seen before.
And really a lot of the reason is because, they don't have the type of control and choice that they're looking for when they're trying to engage with these employers. So they don't get the type of communication they want. Obviously the pay isn't what they might want. The experience with the agency might not be what they're looking for.
As I talk to our Flexors, that's our workforce, our Indeed Flex workers are our flexors. I was talking to one today who was telling me about how he worked yesterday, and then went and worked on, Indeed Flex again in the evening. And then he's back doing another job today.
And that's because he's in a situation right now where he needs to be able to amp up the amount of hours that he's working, to be able to provide for his family to be able to pay rent and put food on the table, and through the Indeed Flex platform we give our workforce the ability and the control and choice to be able to work as much or as little they want where they just want to work on the weekends taking tickets at the local soccer game, or they want to be able to have that many shifts within a short period of time. We allow them to be able to have the control and choice to manage their schedule.
And that helps drive better outcomes and retention of the workforce and ultimately allows the cream to rise and us to be able to acquire and retain the best workforce.
As I mentioned, the staffing market is broken. It's really hard to attract and retain workers at pace.
If that worker I was telling you about was working at a traditional agency even if it was like a permanent 40 hours per week job.
That's not enough for him. He needs to go work other places right now to be able to hit the financial goals that he has. But he doesn't have another option right? But with a digital platform like the one that Indeed Flex has. And then, in addition to that, the one that a lot of the other presenters that are involved in this summit that HyperTrack is providing an extremely unique value proposition to the workforce (working with the shift work marketplaces) and saying, “Hey, you know what we're gonna be able to give you type of work that you want, when you want.”
And then we can also help our clients to be able to have the right type of visibility and drive better results into their contingent labor process
At the end of the day, the technology isn't just supposed to be a slick app.
It's really supposed to prioritize speed, quality and choice to be able to drive better outcomes both for the job seekers as well as for the employers.
And if you think about it, actually this is the same thing that other industries have done.
A job seeker first marketplace
"It's important to make sure that we're putting the people as the lifeblood of what we're doing at Indeed Flex, we are job seeker first, period."
I remember when I was growing up, if I was driving down the highway in my 1985 Volvo Station wagon and I wanted to listen to music, I opened the glove compartment, and whatever CDs were in that glove compartment – that was my only choice.
Now I can go on Spotify. I can listen to literally any song that has ever been recorded in the history of the world on demand – right now in my car.
That type of control and choice has never been available in the staffing industry until now.
And so the work, the noble efforts that the people that are working on this digital staffing environment are putting in are really transforming, not just this industry, but the way that people interact with their work and their work life.
If you had told someone 10 years ago they would be buying books and toilet paper and all that stuff online and potentially TV without ever seeing it or testing it out, they'd say, you're crazy.
But you look what's happening with Amazon and that type of evolution has happened.
But we're a little bit behind when it comes to the staffing industry. And so, Indeed Flex, we're trying to change the way that people find work.
So really, it's important to make sure that we're putting the people as the lifeblood of what we're doing at Indeed Flex, we are job seeker first, period.
It's not about focusing on just what the client wants. It's about driving the right type of opportunities and outcomes for job seekers.
Because if you give the job seeker the type of work that they want and the satisfaction that they want.
You're then going to have happier clients.
If job seekers don't like the agency they're working with, or they're not getting paid fast enough, or they're being sent to a location. It's too far away from them, or that doesn't match their skill set, or they're not being given choice. Do you know what happens?
They turn over and they go somewhere else. and the offsetting effect of that is that the client is then dissatisfied.
But if you can make sure that you're driving successful, happy, competent workforce, then you're also going to have happier clients, and ultimately you're able to build an ecosystem where the cream rises and the best workers get the best opportunities. And the best opportunities are the ones that the best clients have. And so you create a marketplace.
A marketplace where there is competition, and that competition drives a desire for these clients to be able to attract and retain the best workers and so it equalizes the playing field and removes, essentially, the traditional staffing agency that too often plays a middleman in the process and allows client and worker to effectively connect for job seekers. It's quite simple.
Making it easy for job seekers and employers
“But if you can make sure that you're driving successful, happy, competent workforce, then you're also going to have happier clients, and ultimately you're able to build an ecosystem where the cream rises and the best workers get the best opportunities. And the best opportunities are the ones that the best clients have.”
They can browse jobs. They can book shifts. They can clock in work and get paid instantly.
So they're able to easily see the different locations. And we, by the way, will serve up the the jobs to these job seekers based on the preferences they've given us, hey? I don't wanna work on Saturday nights, and I don't wanna work anywhere. That's further than you know, 10 miles from me and you know what I'm not willing to work for less than $12 or $15 or $17 an hour.
And I really want a job that's in this industry or that industry or this role or that role, and serving that up to them so that they can have a curated list of the best opportunities.
And then for employers it needs to be just as simple. They need to be able to post, choose the workers, manage the time and attendance and also rate the performance as well.
It's really impressive when you're able to rate the performance, because then that provides the feedback loop of the marketplace to allow the best-performing workers to have the best opportunities in the future.
And really at the end of the day, then it comes to having the visibility and being honest instead of hiding, you know. Hiding in the appendix of a QBR. Is too often happens with a lot of traditional staffing.
Giving the clients. The visibility to be able to understand here is how my contingent staffing program is working right now. Here's what my fulfillment rate is.
On Saturdays I have a lower fulfillment rate than I do on Mondays. What's the reason for that? What changes should we make? How can I strategize more effectively to be able to drive better outcomes. You know, and then the other side of it is also recruitment.
I think this one is probably not talked about enough when it comes to digital staffing, it is critical and important to make sure you have a quality workforce background checks, drug tests, interviews. That's hard stuff to do too often. Digital staffing companies will end up positioning themselves as a Saas organization software as a service.
No touch, zero touch, little touch.And that is not a bad thing.
But ultimately, what our clients want is consistency, and they want quality workforce.
Smart matching engine
"We take the data and insights that we have within our system and ensure that we are driving quality through that data."
And you can use technology to be able to drive that. But ultimately it's really important to make sure that there's a human aspect to the fact that we need to make sure that we're making understanding the competencies and skill sets of our workforce and then assigning them. We're giving them options that are the right options for them.
Because a worker doesn't want to go to a job they're not going to be good at, and a client does not want to bring in a worker that's not going to be good. It's important to make sure that we're interviewing our workers, that we're doing upskilling events for them, that we're giving them incentives. And then ultimately, we have an account management structure that can help to facilitate all these different things.
And then this is the beautiful part about it is our smart matching engine. One of the best parts about our smart matching engine is what it can give you. We take the data and insights that we have within our system and ensure that we are driving quality through that data.
So what our smart matching engine does is it takes the number of the success rate, and how many thumbs up a client is giving to a worker? How consistent is the worker? Do they no show? Do they cancel?
And a number of other criteria, and then, when we offer the worker – we make sure we're offering it to the best workers that are close by that have that skill set which, by the way, we actually verified and didn't just ask them to click a button.
These are the types of things that help drive ultimately better outcomes for our clients on our fully W2 workforce.
So I want to thank everyone for their time and would welcome any questions or comments, or you can always feel free to reach out to me on Linkedin.
"Anyone who's in the staffing industry who says that they don't worry about no shows is lying."
Gaurav Deshpande: James. Wonderful presentation. There are multiple questions. Let me go through this one by one.
Gaurav Deshpande: First question about Indeed Flex - as Indeed acquired Syft in 2019, and it became Indeed Flex. What were the major changes in terms of how you looked at the staffing market? With the flex work coming in. Can you describe that?
James Terry: Yeah, I mean, I'd say I'd say that you have to keep in mind. In June of 2019, Indeed Flex was purchased, and a good 8 months later the the world changed for 2 years and the pandemic hit and so I'd say, like, I kind of have to answer that question from the framework of what I'm gonna say is probably a little bit of the changes from the pandemic as well as changes from from, indeed.
But I would say ultimately, the one of the one of the best parts of the partnership that we now have with, Indeed, is, we can go to clients, and we can say, gone are the days of permanent recruitment and a recruitment and TA (Talent Acquisition) team and staffing agencies or permanent recruitment staffing agencies, and then like a procurement team that's managing those staffing agencies on the side. And that's kind of in the middle.
Now we have an opportunity to be able to engage with clients and say, Listen, Indeed, as an organization is completely agnostic to your decision.
we want you to have the best outcome for your workforce sometimes that is permanent and sometimes that is contingent that could depend on location that could depend on skill set that could depend on your employee, brand that could depend on. If it's a peak or a trough, or how long you're going to need the workforce for.
But one of the best parts about the partnership that we have with clients is it is not going and saying, Hey, you need to spend more on sponsored jobs to just bring in more permanent workers.
It's not, “hey, you just need to hire more contingent workers”. It's “let's talk about what your total talent strategy is” and have an informed and educated conversation about what is gonna help you as an organization drive the best results for your operational leaders and for your financial team.
So you can make sure that you're looking good and you're doing the right by the company as opposed to being pulled in multiple directions by whoever just has happens to have a stake in it.
Gaurav Deshpande: Wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. Next question is about the flex platform itself and the type of industries you serve? What are the type of industries that you are recruiting for today?
James Terry: Yep. So Indeed Flex is active in light industrial hospitality. Clerical and call center. I would say, it's it's those. Those are the primary industries that we that we play in right now.
Gaurav Deshpande: Got it. And what's the distribution between these industries?
James Terry: Yeah. So so going back to actually back to the pandemic part of it. In the UK, we are primarily, I’d say we're a little bit more hospitality, probably by a hair than we are industrial or facilities management or clerical.
Aand that's because that's how, Indeed Flex was founded as a hospitality staffing app in in in in the UK.
James Terry: On the other hand, in the US. When we moved from the UK to the US. It was in early 2021, so hospitality didn't really exist at all. And so we started to focus quite a bit more on on light industrial. And so I would say in the US. We're definitely more light, industrial, heavy than we are hospitality.
But the great thing is, our our platform can do both things. And we're able to configure it effectively, to be able to address all those markets.
Gaurav Deshpande: Wonderful, James. One more question here. This one is. Actually, this is nicely piece up for the next session after you
Gaurav Deshpande: is no shows an issue that you see with hospitality in UK or light industrial workers in United States. And how do you?
Gaurav Deshpande: How do you see No shows currently?
James Terry:
Yeah, Anyone who's in the staffing industry who says that they don't worry about no shows is lying, I mean, it is obviously a concern. What I would say that is really important. and I think one of the really difficult parts of how the staffing industry over the last couple of decades has kind of gotten it wrong is the fact that the staffing industry has been for far too long a top of funnel engine.
And what I mean by that is that the average redeployment rate in the staffing industry, redeployment rate being, if I work in this for a staffing firm for more than one client.
The average redeployment rate is less than 7%, which means less than 10% of the time is that worker going and working at 2 clients.
Why is that important? Why does that relate to no show rate?
I'll tell you the reason that it's important is because if you have a worker who goes and works for one client and then decides it's not necessarily for them. Or that assignment ends.
That doesn't mean that that's a bad worker.
Potentially, the reason that the assignment ended was because there was a drop in demand.
Potentially the reason the worker decided that that wasn't the type of role for them was because it was too far of a commute, or it didn't match their schedule that they thought it would, and they weren't able to take grandma to the doctors on Wednesday afternoons.
And so it's important because those workers can be really quality workers.
The highest no-show rate you're gonna have is on a brand spanking new worker who has never worked for you before.
James Terry: But if you can take a workforce that has worked for you that has gotten a lot of thumbs up and 5 star ratings from clients, and you're able to redeploy them around a lot across multiple clients. The risk of no show drops significantly. If it's someone's 1st shift Gaurav, if it's your 1st shift on Indeed Flex, I'm probably gonna be worried if you're gonna show up.
If it's your 15th I don't even have to think twice about it – because you're reliable.
And I'm only offering work ideally to the workers that have worked the most and had the most 5 star ratings.
Gaurav Deshpande: Completely understand. And that's wonderful. Thank you for for sharing those insights.
Gaurav Deshpande: I'm gonna take the other end of the spectrum. Now with the last question, which is about payment disputes, as you know, just like no-shows payment disputes on how many hours the worker was at the site is one of the issues that shift work marketplaces deal with.
How do you see payment dispute related to hours worked?
James Terry: Great question. I think that an important way to frame it up like the reason you have a payment dispute is because you do not have a source of truth
If you have a source of truth, though, as far as ultimately a payment dispute is actually the that's the last part of a very specific chain of events that starts with the lack of agreement on whether or not the worker was there at the time that they said they were, or they are who they say they are when you're tracking time and attendance.
Those are the 3 things that matter.
Are you where you say you are? Are you who you say you are, and what time is it right now.
If you can effectively track those three things, then you can drive clients to actually use our system, or use the system of record to approve or edit, or change or decline that it can significantly decrease the number of billing disputes you have because it becomes a dispute when the client receives the invoices, and as and is unhappy, and it becomes a dispute when the worker doesn't get paid the right amount.
But if we can make sure that we're getting everyone to lock hands and agree 4 days before payroll is even processed, then, all of a sudden, you don't run into those issues.
Gaurav Deshpande: That's wonderful. This is the last question is a question from me.
The last question is from me as you went on this journey of explosive growth, for Indeed Flex in United States, and led that as the chief of staff.
How do you see the what has been the most surprising moment in the last 4, 5 years, which included, by the way, the pandemic?
James Terry: Yeah, I got hired by Ideed Flex literally a month before the pandemic started. I got hired in London, England.
I moved to London, England, got hired, worked for a month, and then got sent home to like literally work from my basement apartment basement flat for another two years so.
But my London experience was not quite as I had originally planned and envisioned, although it was great. I love that it's a great city, and I'd love to move back someday.
James Terry: The my, the most memorable moment for me over the past 5 years. And Indeed Flex is seeing actually how the market is changing.
It's seeing that 4 years ago people thought of a staffing application as a gig app right? Day labor. All 1099. And there are definitely providers out there that provide day labor 1099 work, right?
Which, if you have a bunch of picker/packers in a warehouse. It's probably not how you should be doing things. But what I've noticed has changed over the past couple of years is HR's willingness and openness to play a more proactive role in the contingent staffing process.
Too often it's handled just by the site level managers and those Site level managers have 20 agencies that they're using, and they just use whoever. And if you walk in with a box of donuts, they say, sure I'll give you a shot, and there's nothing wrong with that. But how are we actually tracking a success criteria and ensuring that agency is delivering to level.
They want them to deliver to a lot of the times. You there's there's a a lack of visibility into the actual success of of those agencies.
But operations doesn't really care about that. The procurement team only cares about squeezing margin, right? That's all they want.
The HR and talent acquisition team actually is really interestingly positioned in that they are very connected to the local sites. They know what the needs of the site managers and local operators are, because they have to hire for those roles, but they are also part of a corporate function.
And so I've noticed that there's been a drive over the past couple of years to be able to have these HR and talent acquisition teams play a more active role in the contingent labor process.
I really like that because those are the types of people that kind of get it.
They understand staffing and recruitment, and they understand what works and what doesn't work. And they actually want to, partner, because they're not thinking about just cost cutting or just getting arms and legs.
They're thinking about driving the right type of results for their clients who are the operators while ensuring that they're maintaining costs for their corporate decision makers in the procurement and finance teams.
Gaurav Deshpande: That's a wonderful observation, and I have seen it myself also, having worked in staffing industry for several years, now. James. Amazing session. Thank you for sharing the time with us. We are going to the next session now to talk about no, shows. The topic that we touched.
Then we'll have Saurabh Das our VP of Engineering share the prescription on how he is helping manage no shows for three million shifts annually.
So please join us for that. Take a couple of minutes of break and come right back. And, James, thank you for joining us here.
James Terry: Thank you for having me.
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