Welcome to CPO Rising’s all-new feature, the Future of Work Influencer series, which will highlight innovative voices in the evolving world of work. This exciting new series will be a go-to spot for progressive thoughts on how technology, transformational thinking, and revolutionary ideas are changing how work gets done. Be sure to check out past articles in this series here.
For this week’s Future of Work Influencer feature, we are excited to chat with Rick Bowman, CEO of Shiftgig:
Christopher J. Dwyer: Rick, thanks so much for joining us. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became a part of this industry.
Rick Bowman: At Shiftgig, I joined as CTO in 2017, and last summer I was asked to step into the CEO role. My former background has been in creating consumer-level experiences for employees to create positive behavior changes on how workers can better engage with their paychecks.
The way that workers gain access to opportunity has always been incredibly interesting to me. What better way to help solve people’s financial issues than to create new access to opportunity? I think the Gig Economy is the future of creating a new model for work, where workers are empowered with flexibility, and companies have a new level of agility.
Technology is the critical enabler of the Future of Work, but it doesn’t work alone – the Gig Economy will only work with the existence of trusted relationships, and human connections. The staffing industry is at an incredible inflection point and is so well-positioned to embrace the Gig Economy and lead the future. I am excited about working with staffing agencies to innovate, grow, and scale their business.
CJD: It is very clear that the digital staffing industry has exploded in growth over the past several years (and, particularly over the past 12-to-18 months). From your perspective, what do you think contributes to this growth? And, do you see the expansion of digital staffing continuing into the years ahead?
RB: It’s simple. Two trends are accelerating at the same time. Workers are demanding that they work differently than they ever have before. The days of coming out of school and going to work with a company for life are long gone. Workers want flexibility; they want change. Crain’s Future of Work report showed 78% of workers ranked flexibility as the most important criteria for the job. And, companies are having to compete with each other at the speed of the digital economy. Restaurants, logistics, healthcare, and nearly every industry are all facing increased pressure to act with incredible new levels of speed and accuracy, and only new approaches to work can actually meet these evolving needs.
In the years to come, non-digital staffing will go away. Clients need speed, transparency, and agility, and their businesses are increasingly needing to be responsive 24/7. Firms that just continue to rely on phone calls and emails won’t be able to compete. But, I don’t think digital staffing will remove the value of great human connections. In fact, I think it will enhance it dramatically. I think the best firms will get out of lower-value tasks and use the new time their teams have to create consultative client and worker relationships that allow them to become even deeper trusted partners.
CJD: One of the interesting attributes about the Shiftgig platform is that you are bringing a different type of talent into the digital staffing realm. How does Shiftgig transform the Gig Economy for hourly workers?
RB: Our mission has always been to transform the way people work. Our ability to offer opportunities outside of the well-known gig work, like driving for ride-sharing or delivery services, opens up the talent pool to people who may not be interested in that type of work. Our clients are primarily focused on industries like hospitality, food service, retail, light industrial, events, tradeshows, and experiential marketing. We find that variability in types of work is part of the flexibility that workers are seeking and a major reason why they stay engaged. Thinking differently about how we deploy workers to clients allows us to reach out and people who wouldn’t have participated in traditional staffing, like college students, stay-at-home parents, and people with part-time jobs who want to build up side gigs.
CJD: Where does digital staffing fit into the Future of Work? Do you feel that these sources of talent will become as relied-upon as traditional staffing suppliers in the near future?
RB: The Future of Work, to me, is about a core of creating a decent and fair exchange of people’s time and energy to enable companies to succeed. Staffing companies can’t win without being able to retain the best workers. Workers are demanding control and flexibility, so staffing agencies must embrace this digital transformation to keep up. I don’t think digital and traditional staffing will continue to be terms we’ll need to talk about in the future. Everyone that’s still in business will be digital. How they approach it will be different; how they innovate with technology will be unique.
There is just no way today’s staffing model of randomly calling long lists of workers, or bulk texting thousands of people in a database, to fill their clients’ assignments, will continue to fly. Enterprises will demand that fill rates increase at the same time quality increases, and there is no way to keep achieving these goals at scale with speed without important new technologies.
CJD: What does the future hold for Shiftgig?
RB: Last week we announced our transition to being 100% focused on our software. Two firms, LGC Hospitality and Headway Workforce Solutions, will take over our current staffing business. Combined with our growing group of innovative customers, we will focus on creating the most compelling technology platform, and, working to build the most innovative network of agencies and organizations that embrace the potential for their workforce to seek a new way to work. I think we’ll see staffing agencies that leverage the Shiftgig platform become known by workers as employers of choice.
Our investment in leveraging deep data-based behavioral insights will continually drive better outcomes for agencies’ clients. We will continue to be transformative to the world of work by creating a new level of trust. By providing data-driven insights to employers on a job seeker’s skills, preferences, and true engagement level, Deploy will produce better-fitting matches, leading to higher shift success, and happier workers for staffing agencies.
Connect with Rick on LinkedIn, or visit www.shiftgig.com for more information on Shiftgig.
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