Kimberly Hurd

Top 50 leaders shaping the gig economy
Kimberly Hurd
Chief Growth Officer
Onsi

Onsi provides an easy way for businesses to reward their workers. Our platform is designed to help businesses build programmes that drive loyalty and engagement, delivering a wide range of benefits to workers via their Onsi Card.

The Origin Story

Kimberly’s background: 

Kimberly Hurd is a startup veteran, building a wealth of diverse experience that has led her to become recognised as a top 50 leader. Her experience with leadership roles at Zomato gave her unique insight into the supply side of labor marketplaces. She further explored this as a founder at Tabl, building a platform matching chefs and food suppliers with food lovers looking for unique dining experiences and high-quality craft food. 

When she began working with the founders of London-based Collective Benefits (now called Onsi), she was already familiar with the dynamics that motivate the independent and flexible workers that are the backbone of these marketplaces.  

Kimberly was acutely aware of the challenges a flexible worker faces, which are so different from those of a full-time employee. Full-time employment opportunities come with benefits such as health insurance and paid time off, whereas self-employed and flex workers do not have these benefits. As flex work becomes a greater share of the economy, it is more important for this large segment of the economy to have stability and income protection. 

70% of flexible workers have no savings every month, which significantly increases their financial risk. This means that without financial security, if they are sick or injured and miss a couple of days of work, it puts them, it puts their families deeply at risk.

Obsessed with this concept, Kimberly became fully immersed in providing a foundation of stability for these workers. This resulted in the development of a benefits platform that businesses can leverage to extend benefits and earning protection to their flexible workers. Onsi’s flagship products are accident and sickness insurance and public liability insurance, so workers’ earnings are protected when something goes wrong. Plus access to discounts to make their money go further, with crucial savings on fuel and food to help their everyday lives. After launching in 2019, Onsi now supports almost one million workers in 38 countries, with market-leading clients including Wolt, Just Eat and FreeNow. 

After rebranding as Onsi in November 2023, it continues to expand the benefits available on the platform to include on-demand pay to workers worldwide. 

With reports stating that 79% of workers would be willing to switch to another business because of on-demand pay, it is a benefit that is proving to be increasingly sought out by workers.

Onsi’s unique features

Onsi not only allows seamless control of worker on-demand pay, rewards, instant bonuses, and insurance claims. This unique approach closes a gap in the gig economy as few organizations are focused on this aspect of shoring up the financial infrastructure of the workers on gig work platforms. 

Tiered benefit levels 

To encourage long-term loyalty, businesses can set tiered benefit levels, with different thresholds to motivate workers to take more shifts. Teams can use pre-set tiers, or customize tiers based on their own business cycles and regional demands. Onsi users benefit from tools to manage on-demand pay and send instant payments; plus, businesses can send instant bonuses to an individual or groups of workers as needed. 

Specialists in gig workers

Onsi is designed primarily for shift-based gig workers, with usage based-pricing, designed tiers, specialised integrations and appropriate products that make a meaningful difference.

Modular approach

Onsi gives businesses true flexibility to build a custom loyalty program, with a unique packaging approach. Businesses can design their program - from choosing the levels of insurance to provide, how many discounts, and the number of times a worker can draw down their on-demand pay each month. This flexibility allows each program to be customized to the business’s unique requests. 

These features give gig work marketplaces peace of mind as they can focus on industry specialization, matching the best worker with the right opportunity, and managing customer relationships.

How Onsi is shaping the gig economy

Onsi is a business-to-business platform designed to provide self-employed workers with comprehensive benefits that protect their income. By using Onsi, gig work marketplaces can offer competitive benefits to flexible workers, that not only help the financial well-being of workers but help businesses meet their metrics, too. 

We help companies provide income protection and financial well-being for workers, the platforms that depend on them actually can also get ahead because they get a competitive advantage of having a loyal and engaged workforce.

By providing these benefits to workers, the businesses can benefit in a multitude of ways, including: 

Decrease churn rates

Incentivize workers to accept more gigs and stay with those gigs on a longer more consistent basis. 

Build a loyal, long-term talent pool 

Reward longevity with tiered benefits that encourage consistent performance over time.

Increase the number of active workers

Ensure workers are engaged with communications, apps, and benefits from the very first gig.

Onsi gives any business the capacity to manage benefits, worker loyalty, and extra rewards to ensure continuity for workers within their talent pool. With regular communications, offers, and insights to display what’s working, Onsi becomes a glue between workers and the platforms that match them with work shifts. Creating an experience that gives workers what they need as they pursue flexible work is an important component of a sustainable ecosystem for workers and businesses alike.

Onsi’s vision for creating a world where everyone wins

We want the world of flexible work to come without the trade-offs of a lack of financial security. So, we've engineered an innovative benefits platform that allows that. But ultimately, what we want is for workers to have better financial well-being for the companies that depend on them to be able to build their businesses more sustainably.

Gig work has given workers the ability to control their work schedules and how they work, the next step in creating a truly sustainable ecosystem is giving workers more control over their finances. The more that workers are provided with incentives that are aligned with their interests, the more their work product will be aligned with desired business outcomes. Onsi is an important piece of the puzzle that results in higher loyalty, better retention, and more consistency on the job. 

What’s next for Onsi? Onsi will continue to build tools that ensure workers have access to money when they need it most. Improving the lives of everyday workers is at the core of Onsi’s mission. As the landscape for gig work marketplaces evolves, the need to support workers to carry out their essential work is more important than ever. Onsi is at the center of this solution, innovating and leveraging its leadership to help companies define their role in the future of the gig economy.

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