Episode 220: The flexible economy: doing the work you want when you want to do it – with James Terry of Indeed Flex

Episode 220: The flexible economy: doing the work you want when you want to do it - with James Terry of Indeed Flex

Jeremy Cline [00:00:00]:
Can you find work as easily as you can order a takeaway on your phone? Can you go from couch to job in a few hours? And can you pick and choose the hours that work for you? That's what we're going to be exploring in this week's episode. I'm Jeremy Cline, and this is Change Work Life. Hello and welcome to Change Work Life, the show that's all about beating the Sunday evening blues and enjoying Mondays again. I'm a career coach, you can find out more about that at changeworklife.com/coaching, and in each episode, my guests and I bring you tips, strategies, and stories to help you enjoy a more satisfying and fulfilling working life. We have more flexibility than ever in our lives. Whilst I had a selection of four TV channels when I was growing up, my daughter can watch almost anything on demand. I can order food, groceries, or transportation when I want it. But when it comes to work, you seem to have two choices: a job with fixed hours but a regular income; or a business which might give you flexibility but which comes with a lot less certainty about when you'll get paid. Well, now there might be a third option, flexible work, where you pick and choose the hours and the jobs you want to do at the times which suit you. To tell us more, I'm joined by James Terry, Head of US Revenue at Indeed Flex. James, welcome to the podcast.

James Terry [00:01:37]:
Thank you so much for having me, Jeremy.

Jeremy Cline [00:01:39]:
It seems like I can't listen to a podcast these days without hearing an advert for Indeed. But I had not come across Indeed Flex before. So, can you tell us a bit more about you and what you do?

James Terry [00:01:50]:
Yes, I'd be happy to. So, as you all know, Jeremy, the concept of Indeed is helping people find work more quickly and allowing, really reducing the friction in job seekers being able to find the best employer, the employer of choice for them. Now, where Indeed Flex comes in is, there's also a huge number of employers and, quite frankly, job seekers also, who are looking for more a temporary type employment. And sometimes that temporary means a temporary and then transitioning that over to a permanent opportunity. And then, sometimes that also means more flexible work and gig type work. And that's really where Indeed Flex comes in, is allowing businesses to be able to scale up and scale down their workforce at scale, and also allowing job seekers the ability to be able to go through a process and be able to find work very quickly. And so, you could be working on the Indeed Flex platform for one employer on a really consistent basis, or you could be working for a multitude of employers. On a Friday, you could be picking and packing, on a Saturday, you could be handling call centre work, and on a Sunday, you could be doing concessions work at a football game. So, the idea is it really gives a lot of flexibility to the worker to be able to choose where, when, how, and the type of role that they're going to be taking. And that's really something we found is something that is changing in the market and a demand that a lot of workers are having. And we're noticing that a lot of employers are also starting to move in that direction as well.

Jeremy Cline [00:03:22]:
Okay, so what this isn't is part-time work, which you might find on the main Indeed platform, part-time work or temporary work, and it's not what we have in the UK, flexible working, where you can make a request to an employer to work different hours or work shorter hours or something like that. And that often comes with parents who want to spend more time with their kids. But what you're describing, I think, is really the ability for a worker to pick and choose the jobs that they're doing. They could be all sorts of different things, as you've just described. And for the companies to say, well, I need a person to do this for a few hours on this day, that kind of thing.

James Terry [00:04:09]:
Yeah, I mean, I would say it's actually all of those and none of those at the same time. I think that the idea here is that those examples you just gave can become a little bit rigid. The idea of Indeed Flex is it really gives the control and the choice to the job seeker to be able to decide, hey, this is the type of schedule that works for me. I mean, the beauty of the work life that we have now and a lot of the way that things are changing is that, because of technology, you have the ability to be able to have more flexibility in the way that you're doing things. The concept here is that there are going to be people that want a part-time schedule, that say, hey, you know what, I can work on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but that's all. You're going to have people who say, you know what, I'm a uni student, and when I'm in Cardiff, I want to be able to work there, and then when I'm back home in Birmingham, I want to be able to work there. And I don't want to have to go through the whole process of applying for and finding and getting employed by, and then subsequently leaving another job, because I'm having to go back to uni, or vice versa. And so, really the idea here is that, because each worker is different and because the demands of each employer are really different, the idea is, hey, how about we just give the flexibility to both sides to be able to determine what is best? And previously, there was an information problem. I would post a role out there, if I was an employer, and I'd have a bunch of people apply, and then I'd have to go through the process of saying, well, you know what, it's not a standard contract, it's not 40 hours, it's only 20, or it's specifically these days, or whatever it might be. And I'd have to go through, and of the candidates that applied, I would realise that there are a lot that maybe the schedule or the process or whatever it might be might not actually work with what they actually needed. Whereas what this does is, this can essentially allow an employer to go out to market and give awareness of what the opportunities are. And then, workers can select, and they can, essentially, on our app, scroll through and decide, you know what, I don't really like this type of role, so I'm not going to pick this one up, or, ooh, this one looks interesting, it's only two or three days, and so I can actually pick this one up and see if it works for me and see if I like it and see if it's the environment, the location, does the commute work for me in my personal life, and they can try it, and then they can decide if that's something they want to continue with or not. Essentially, what it does, it allows workers to be able to try out the type of role that they are looking at before they make a long-term commitment. And also, for other people, like those uni students that I was mentioning, it gives them the ability to be able to work when they want, where they want, how they want, potentially be able to switch locations or choose a schedule that really fits their own personal life a lot better. And I mentioned uni students really as an example. I think that people that are a little bit older, that are pensioners, are also a great fit for this. In addition, we find a lot of mothers and people who are responsible for daycare for their children also really like the ability to be able to have a little bit more flexibility in the way that they're working.

Jeremy Cline [00:07:10]:
You mentioned how technology has enabled this and how there was an information gap that technology was filling. Is that the driver of this, or is there something else which has changed, and the technology is kind of enabling a solution?

James Terry [00:07:31]:
Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I think there's actually two parts to it. So, number one, from the technology standpoint, I think there's two things, number one is the technology, the other side is just societally, there are changes in the expectations that people have in their work right now. So, from a technology standpoint, previously, I would have to apply manually for a number of different roles or positions and see who called me back and go through a process. And as I mentioned, there's a certain vetting process, and just as an employer's interview, you want to see if your job is truly the right fit for you. And so, what this does is essentially gives people the ability to be able to go through a vetting process. And then, now, once we have verified and vetted them, they're able to see all of the different opportunities that are out there for them. So, it's almost like, let them through the gates, and then they can choose all the different choices, as opposed to having to open the gates individually for each specific opportunity. So, that's really, I think, where the technology helps out, as I mentioned before, it gives the job seeker the ability to scroll through and see all the opportunities that are out there that they can pick up. And our motto at Indeed is, we help people get jobs, and in Indeed Flex, it's we help people get jobs instantly. So, can you build a world where someone can go from couch to job in just a handful of hours? From more of a macro perspective, I think that one of the really interesting parts is, if you think about the way that the world overall has evolved in the last 10 years or so, you can go on your phone right now and look at just about any product that is out there and get it delivered to your house in two, three, four hours. And so, you have just this amazing amount of choice and the ability to get things at speed and have that type of access.

James Terry [00:09:30]:
And really, I think that what employers are realising, Jeremy, is that those people that are their consumers are also their workers. And so, what that means is that it's becoming more of an expectation that workers can have that choice in their work life, just as they do in their own personal life. If I say, you know what, I want to buy something online, and I want the red one instead of the blue one, well, previously, at the local grocery store, maybe they only had the blue one. But I want the red one. And now, you can not only have the choice, but you can get it delivered to your house in a few hours. And so, those people that are consumers are also your workers. They want to be able to have more choice in their schedule, in the type of work, in the type of role that they're picking up. And I think that's something that is something that businesses are starting to realise. But also, I mean, just think about how amazing it is that, whereas previously, it might take me a lot of interviews and a long process to be able to find that perfect match for me, whereas now you're giving people the ability to be able to choose where and how and when. And sometimes there's trial and error, and sometimes the first one isn't always the best one, and that's fine. But if you can give people the ability to have that choice and try things out, ultimately, there's going to be a lot faster process to be able to get to that ideal outcome that each of the job seekers individually would be looking for.

Jeremy Cline [00:11:04]:
Okay, so you've talked about from a worker's perspective who this might be particularly suited for. So, you've mentioned university students who have limited hours when they can work, parents who've got childcare responsibilities, retirees who want to carry on working a few hours a week. Are there any other categories that I've missed out?

James Terry [00:11:25]:
I mean, that's the amazing thing, it can really be anyone. There are people who are saying, hey, you know what, I really want to use this to be able to find that long-term solution. I don't have these restrictions of my schedule maybe, and I do just want to be able to find a long-term job or a long-term solution, and going through and manually applying for a bunch of jobs and waiting for who's going to call me back and all these different components can make it difficult, and potentially, that first recruiter that calls you back, maybe that's not actually the best job for you. The beauty of it is that it's actually sort of for everyone, because you have the broad range of opportunities that are out there for each of the job seekers to find. And I think that's the biggest part that's a little bit of a seed change that, and I'm not punting on this question at all, but the whole component here is that there are six billion people in the world, and there's probably six billion different types of needs that people have. And there's a lot of companies out there. And so, the idea here is, remove the friction and the process in being able to get a job, such that you can essentially go and choose exactly what is best for you by just creating the ability for people to go and see, here are all the different choices that I can have, and let me go and try one of these. And a component of it is having clarity around exactly where this place is located, obviously, what the pay rate is, being able to see how long it will take for my house to be able to commute there, what is the schedule and what is the shift pattern that I would need to have. Hey, is this a good employer overall or not? Is this one that I would want to work for? And so, giving people the ability to be able to see all these things really means that any profile works. Because there's a multitude of different job options out there, and so the idea here is let people match themselves as opposed to being placed, right? The biggest component here is, whereas in traditional recruitment, you would apply for or interview for a job, whether directly with an employer or with a recruitment agency or staffing agency, and they would assign you to an employer. With this, that's not the case. You are choosing where you want to work as opposed to being assigned. Because that assignment tends to, not necessarily, and I'm not saying it doesn't, but not necessarily take the job seeker and all of their needs directly into account. A lot of the times, hey, you know what, this client called me earlier today and is really upset because I don't have enough workers out there. So, the next person that walks in, I'm going to assign them to this particular client. Well, that might not be in necessarily the best interest of the job seeker. And so, the idea here is, let the job seeker make that decision on their own. Which, by the way, creates a complexity on our side. We're running essentially a two-sided marketplace here, where you have to have the right workers for the right jobs, having the right people. And if you have the right people, but you don't have the jobs, then all of a sudden, those people are going to churn and not be able to pick up the roles. Conversely, if you have a lot of roles, a lot of employers that are looking for talent, but you don't have the job seekers that are looking for those types of roles, whether they are long term or short term, ad hoc, gig work, whatever it might be, if you don't have those job seekers, then the client is going to be unhappy, they're not going to be satisfied, and they're going to churn. Really, the idea here is, all of that complexity that typically, historically, would be put largely onto the job seeker and the employer, the idea here is, hey, let us specialise in that, let us create this marketplace, this vibrant area where we can have that matching happen, so that both of the two different parties, the job seeker and the employer, don't have to worry about that part of it.

Jeremy Cline [00:15:24]:
Okay. I feel, to give this a bit more colour and specificity, it would help to talk a little bit about what are the roles, what are the industries, who are the employers who are looking for flexible workers, and how are they doing it from their perspective. What does it look like for them? Because I mean, thinking back to my old profession as a lawyer, I can't imagine having this kind of setup where I would say, let's see who's advertising for private client lawyer jobs, and let's pick it via an app. It would be either direct contact with firms of interest or with, more likely actually, recruiters specialising in that area. So, can you talk a little bit more about that from the organisation perspective?

James Terry [00:16:20]:
Definitely. So, I'll look at it maybe from the standpoint of like a spectrum of the type of assignments that employers typically are looking for. So, on one side, you'll have, let's call it maybe more white collar. So, we'll call this like clerical, office type work. In those types of situations, an employer may say, hey, you know what, we don't specialise in recruiting for these different roles, we want someone who, to your point, isn't going to be a different person every day. We need a certain amount of consistency to that role. And potentially, we want to be able to bring someone on who would transition over a certain period of time over to a full-time worker. That would be potentially call centre, marketing, engineering, any of those types of roles allow someone to, essentially, from an employer's standpoint, it almost positions like try before you buy. From the worker standpoint, it's relatively similar to that. Then, you also have employers who are saying, hey, you know what, we have these certain periods of the year where we have a strong increase in demand. So, a peak period. Think about a home improvement or a hardware store in the springtime, in a couple of months, they're going to need to ramp up quite significantly. If you think about third-party logistics that have huge peaks around the wintertime, they're going to say, hey, you know what, right before the holiday period, we're going to need a lot of workers. Or if you think about even a grocery store or a supermarket, right around Easter, they have a huge increase in demand. When university students transfer back home or vice versa, they have an increase, not necessarily an increase in demand, but they have a drop off in their consistent workforce, they need to be able to fill those gaps. And so, you have those types of people, where I know that I'm going to need people for a certain period of time, it's not going to be forever, but I do need some consistency, maybe a month, maybe two months, whatever it might be. And so, you have those types of employers. And then, the third is, I would say much more ad hoc, where if I have a very, very large banquet hall in London, or if I have a stadium in Manchester, Liverpool, and I know that I have a certain number of football games as an example that I need to be able to staff for, and it's just a huge influx of hundreds and hundreds of workers just for a very short period of time, maybe that's a day or two or three, I need to be able to find those workers. And it's very hard to be able to identify all those workers across in a short period of time and really for a short assignment. And so, the idea is allowing these workers to be able to pick up these different types of roles. And where it really gets interesting, Jeremy, is you start thinking about, well, maybe you have someone who is looking for that long-term, consistent assignment, maybe they do work that eight-to-five, Monday-through-Friday role, in that example one I gave you, where there's this long-term assignment where someone will eventually be transferred over, but in reality, we find that people that are making less than 20 pounds an hour, about half of those are going to have second jobs because they need to be able to make ends meet. Especially with the cost of living increases that we've seen really across the globe. But it's definitely been a very acute problem in the UK as of late. What we find is that those people, they might be working that long-term assignment, but they also want to be able to work elsewhere. And so, what if I could work Monday through Friday from eight to five, but then also, I can do concessions at the local football game on a Saturday as well. And that, all of a sudden, is where it gets really interesting, because you're giving workers the ability, on one side, to be able to fill their schedule with the amount of work that they want, and then from an employer standpoint, it's great because I don't have to worry as much of this inherent churn that's going to happen, because I know that the platform, the system that I'm using, Indeed Flex in this example, is giving people the ability to be able to fill their schedule with the amount of work that they want. But I don't necessarily have to worry about, well, because this worker isn't getting enough hours, they're only getting 35 hours in this particular location, and they might want 40 hours, I don't have to worry about them going and looking for another 40-hour-a-week job. I can know that that 35 hours will work for them, and then they can top up with doing concessions at the football game on a Saturday. So, it really has benefits across the board for both job seekers and employers.

Jeremy Cline [00:20:56]:
I feel like this is a good platform for either side to trial something. So, once you've gone through the hoops, it means that someone, the worker can trial a job, actually see whether they like it, do it for a few hours, and from an employer's perspective, then they get to trial someone. But presumably, beyond that, the employer is going to be interested in at least consistency of person if it's more ad hoc hours. So, say, taking your example of the football stadium, then, yes, they might only need more people in when it's a home game at that particular stadium, but presumably, for them it's much better to get the same people over and over again who they don't have to constantly train up and who know what they're doing.

James Terry [00:21:55]:
Definitely. You hit on, I think, a big question mark that people have. Well, it's like, okay, conceptually I get it, but I don't want to have a different person showing up every time, because even if it's a relatively straightforward job, there's time that it takes, I mean, if nothing else, where's the entrance? Where do I actually show up to, to go and start working? Where's the time clock? So on and so forth. What we do within our technology is, we allow the employers to rate the workers after each different assignment on a one- to five-star scale. And so, what happens is, if an employer rates a worker as five stars, then what happens is they get automatically added to what we call the worker pool. And those are essentially your favourites. And so, then the next time I have that game, what I can do is, I can actually post the role out and offer it only to my five-star workers. And so, you can essentially give those workers a first right of refusal. So, if you start to build a little bit of experience within our technology, you live in a world where if you have need for 100 people, and you have, let's say, 200 people that are rated the five stars, you post the rollout, and maybe 75 of those five-star workers will pick it up. And then, as we get closer to the start date, obviously, you're thinking, well, I do still need to fill those last 25 positions. And so, our matching algorithm can automatically go out and try to fill those other 25 positions with potentially people that have not worked there before. But what we'll also do is, the way that we will prioritise those other 25 workers that haven't worked there before, we will actually offer those roles out based on their rating from other employers. So, maybe there's another stadium or another hotel that has used them for a similar type of role, then what we'll do is, if they're five-star workers, they may not have worked for you before, but you know they've worked for a competitor down the street or another similar business down the street, and so they haven't been there, but you know pretty certainly that they've actually done that type of job before, and they've been rated five stars. And so, it actually removes a lot of the uncertainty of the quality of the worker. So, one of the things that were one of our goals over the course of the next five, six years is, can you live in a world where the resume does not exist anymore? Think about it this way. If you want to go online, Jeremy, and find a restaurant to take your family out to this evening, you can go on Google, you can go on any number of websites and see what's the star rating. Right? It's a 4.3, 4.5, 4.7, based on the type of cuisine that you're looking for. You don't have that with work and with job seekers. And so, you have this information problem again that ends up happening. And so, what we do is we historically rely on a resume, which is fine, but we find that close to 50% of people lie on their resume. And so, what if you could have a situation where, rather than having to worry about, is this true, is this not true, you can live in a world where, hey, I know that there's accuracy to it because, maybe I didn't rate them five stars, but you know what, three of my colleagues, competitors, other businesses that are in a similar field or industry have rated these workers five stars. And so, I have a certain amount of assurance that these workers are going to be quite strong quality.

Jeremy Cline [00:25:38]:
Does it work the other way? Can workers rate employers? And I was thinking what you said there about how people lie on their CV, employers lie as well. Oh, yeah, we've got a caring environment where everyone's respected, and then you get there, and it's completely not like that at all.

James Terry [00:25:55]:
Yeah, definitely. Workers can also rate the employers on each shift. And we've actually had really interesting situations where workers may have worked at a certain client across multiple different shifts or shift patterns, and you notice, hey, you know what, one shift in particular doesn't rate as well. And then, you can go back to the employer and say, hey, you know what, in this one particular scenario, maybe this one particular manager needs some type of training or something like that. We've actually had one interesting scenario, we had one client that had work across three different shift patterns with us, and one of them was the overnight shift. And the overnight shift always got a much lower rating. Now, the pay rate was higher because it was a night shift, and so there was an incentive for it, but nevertheless, the rating was lower. That sent us a signal of, there's obviously an issue here. We talked to the workers, and you know what the problem was? Well, they turned off the coffee machine every night, and so the workers couldn't have coffee. And so, we go to the employer and say, hey, turn the coffee machine back on or don't turn it off at night so that these night workers are able to have a cup. And all of a sudden, over the course of the next few months, there's an increase in ratings of the workers to the client. And so, it's really great to see when that type of feedback loop works out in a really positive manner.

Jeremy Cline [00:27:13]:
There's something going on in my head about how this is leading, it's the further commoditization of workers, that workers are just warm bodies. They're kind of reduced to plant and machinery, rather than actually being people who have needs and values and that kind of thing. And this is just addressing a symptom of the fact that everything's getting more expensive, people are having to find other sources of income, be that side hustles or that sort of thing. I'm just wondering whether that's something that you ever think of, or whether I'm painting it in rather a negative way.

James Terry [00:27:57]:
Yeah, I mean, I can see how you may initially think that way, but one of the biggest differentiators that I think we have across the industry, and definitely in comparison to a lot of our competitors, is that we 100% are job seeker first. That is the number one priority for us. A lot of the times, recruitment agencies will tend to be more client-focused, because those are the people that pay the bills. But for us, we're job seeker-focused. And the reason is, it's a bit of a bet. We're saying, hey, if you can have an amazing experience for the job seeker, if you can make it extremely easy for them to be able to interact with, find the right types of roles, have that control, have that choice, then, all of a sudden, they have a better experience. And when they have a better experience, it creates a beautiful flywheel where then the client is happy, and the client needs more workers, and so on and so forth. So, we actually very much prioritise the workers, because we know if we're giving the best workers the best work, the best workers who are the most consistent the best opportunities and the first right of refusal, that actually the workers are going to be happier. So, by prioritising the best workers and putting the most focus on them and their happiness and their experience, we actually find that it creates synergies. Because where it becomes a little bit more commoditized is that example I gave before, where someone walks in, and I assign you to a specific role. You're commoditizing the labour there, because you don't care who that person is or what their needs are or what they're expecting out of the role. You're just placing them somewhere. Whereas with Indeed Flex, it's the opposite. You get onboarded, and you get to decide which role you want to pick up and which role you want to take. And so, you're actually giving the job seekers, by giving them the ability to decide where, when, how, how much, how little they work, you're actually creating a world where they are in more control than they were previously.

Jeremy Cline [00:30:03]:
I'm aware that my previous question was predicated a lot on financial need and people doing this kind of work because they need the money, either because they're university students or whatever reason, they need another form of income. But I have a feeling that it goes beyond that. So, I wondered if you could talk to some of the motivations for people to get this kind of work that might not just be about getting paid.

James Terry [00:30:30]:
Yeah, there are a lot of people that will pick up different types of roles for a number of different reasons. I mean, we have people who say, I've recently retired from my long-term job and had been doing it for 20 or 25 years, and I thought that retirement would be great and just enjoying the golden years. But I realised I'm actually quite bored. I want to do something that just keeps me busy. I want to work with my hands, I want to make sure I can keep my mind sharp. You also have people who say, you know what, I'm locked up in my house all day, taking kids to the park or the playground or playing with them. And you know what? I want to be able, when my spouse or my parents are able to watch the kid on the weekends, I want to be able to go out and interact with other people and be able to do something. And so, really, what this is doing actually is allowing whole segment, subsection of workers who previously were probably, you could argue, marginalised, in that they weren't able to find those different types of roles, it's giving them the ability to go and pick up this type of work. And quite frankly, if you think about it, who is probably going to be a really good worker, very consistent, show up on time, do what they say they're going to do? It's these people who are retired, who have worked a job and know what that's like. It's the people who, hey, I've got a three-year-old, and you better believe I have to have a pretty consistent schedule with them, and I'm always going to show up, and I can't sleep in or forget about whatever it might be. These are a lot of the times the people that, they just didn't have the opportunity to pick up this work. So, in reality, how amazing is it that you're giving us whole phylum of workers that didn't have the ability to pick up these jobs, or it was too difficult to find the right job, or it was too rigid or whatever it might be, and previously, they would apply for a role, they knew they could only pick up part-time employment, and they applied for a few jobs, and it turns out, oh you know what, this schedule doesn't work for me. Okay, starting back at square one. Okay, this schedule doesn't work for me. Starting back at square one. But if you can give them that information of this is the type of job, this is what the requirements are really from the jump, and they can sign up for it, and they have because they have a multitude of different options, all of a sudden, you're giving them the ability to quickly pick up work that previously they would not have been able to do.

Jeremy Cline [00:32:50]:
So, that person, the parent who's got limited hours, maybe they work around school drop off and pick up times. They've only got, I don't know, five hours during the day, or maybe they are doing childcare during the day, and they've got, say, a couple of hours in the evening. What are the opportunities that come up which are most accessible and worthwhile for that kind of person?

James Terry [00:33:21]:
Yeah, so for someone in that group that you're talking about, I'd say there's probably three main areas. Number one would be, maybe there is a call centre opportunity where they need to fill a certain gap in the evenings when there's a higher volume of calls to be able to answer and to work through. That's one. Another one would be, maybe there are opportunities within a light industrial warehouse to do picking and packing. A lot of the times, those shifts can be four to six hours. And so, you can have shorter shifts. And also within those types of roles, they don't necessarily need the type of consistency of like, hey, this person is working every single day. As long as you've done it a few times, and you know how to do it, you can jump in. And the third one is, as I think I mentioned before, hospitality type roles. So, maybe you can go and do banquet serving for a large corporate event or for a large wedding at a local hotel or event centre. Maybe you can do concessions at one of the local stadia. So, those are, I'd say, the three main groupings of the types of roles you'll find for people that are looking for more of that ad hoc type work.

Jeremy Cline [00:34:38]:
Okay. And how is this different from platforms like Upwork, which is the one I'm most familiar with, where you have freelancers who have particular sets of skills and people who have needs, they will post their jobs, and the freelancer will pitch for it. And I mean, I know from my own experience that once you find someone that you want to carry on working with, and you've got a repeating role, then you will stick with that person, and you'll carry on using them. So, I'm interested to know what are the similarities and what are the differences.

James Terry [00:35:12]:
Right. So, I mean, in similarity, right, where you mentioned is, that's one of your, as we would call it, five-star workers. You like them, you like their output, you want to give them the ability to pick up that work the first next time. And so, you have that ability within our system. But I would say that the main difference, Upwork is a great organisation, and they're actually not really, they're not at all a competitor of ours, because to your point, they do a lot of more, I would say, contract work or project-based work. Whereas what we're doing is, we're working with clients that have specific shifts or shift patterns that they're looking for. So, it tends to be more of an employer-employee relationship as opposed to more project-based. In the US, we'd call this like a direct employee versus like a 1099 independent contractor. And so, that's kind of the main difference, is that you're looking at Upwork for someone to do a specific, you know, hey, I need you to redesign my website. And that is what it is. Whereas with what we're doing, it tends to be more of, hey, we have specific gaps or shift patterns or shift schedules that we need to be able to fill, for whatever reason, whether that's increased demand, callouts, whatever that might be. And that's I'd say the main fundamental difference. But I'd say, when you look at how we're doing things, the idea here, it's the same concept of how can you use technology to be able to allow people to access workers or jobs if you're a job seeker, that previously you would probably not have even known about. And both Upwork and Indeed Flex are doing that.

Jeremy Cline [00:36:42]:
And you bring up an interesting point there. And I'm sure this is one of those things which is going to vary from country to country and probably state to state. But what's the status of the workers on the platform? I mean, are they independent contractors? And does that mean that they don't necessarily get the benefits that they might do as an employee, like paid time off or pension contributions or health insurance, all those other things that come with being an employee.

James Terry [00:37:16]:
Yeah. So, our employees are not contractors. They are employees essentially of Indeed Flex. So, pension contributions happen. Paid time off, it really depends on the employer, if there are any jurisdictions or locations where it's required to offer paid time off, and it's like a statutory requirement, we will include that for the worker. And if it's something that the client wants to us to accrue, we can do that. So, they truly are employees, but they're employees of Indeed Flex, rather than that end employer. So, pension, apprenticeship, levy, all of that, our employees are, and we are paying into. And so, if you have a worker who's been working for you consistently, and they want to be able, they're able to take out their pension contributions if they want, they're able to take advantage of the apprenticeship programmes that are out there as well.

Jeremy Cline [00:38:10]:
We've talked a lot about the pros from a worker perspective, this kind of model, but I refuse to believe that it's always sunshine and rainbows. So, I'm just interested to know what are the trade offs, what are the things that people should be aware of that makes this different. And it's the trade off in exchange for the positives that you've described.

James Terry [00:38:34]:
Yeah, I would say, probably one of the main ones is, just as a job seeker is looking for it for flexibility, so too is the employer. And so, you could have a situation, we have a requirement that, as an example, a client has to cancel any assignment or reduce the demand for an assignment with more than 24 hours notice. If they do it with less than 24 hours notice, we will essentially continue, we'll pay the worker for four hours at least. But you will have people, you will have situations where a client thinks, hey, you know what, I think I'm going to need 30 people for this particular stadia event, and in reality, I realise a day and a half before, 36 hours before, instead of 30 people, I only need 20 people. And so, they'll reduce the demand in certain scenarios. And so, that worker will now not be able to work that job. So, I'd say that's kind of one of the trade offs. I'd say it does not happen with a significant amount of consistency, because we make sure that the employer knows, hey, when you're reducing your demand like this, you're also creating a poor worker experience. And if this happens more than one or two times, that worker, when they're looking at it, they're going to say, hey, I know that this client cancels the work quite frequently, and so I'm not going to pick up that work. So, you're going to disenfranchise and potentially lose out on some of that labour in the future, especially some of the best workers that are really needing that type of role. Now, I'd say that's probably the main thing. And that's really a trade off that you have is, just as the worker needs a certain amount of flexibility, the client also is going to demand some flexibility within the way that they're scheduling and their ability to be able to shift demand up or down with a little bit shorter notice.

Jeremy Cline [00:40:18]:
Yeah. And I guess life happens. So, presumably, a worker might have to say, giving the appropriate notice, hey, that job I thought I was going to be able to do, well, unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to.

James Terry [00:40:30]:
Yeah. And so, just as the client has 24 hours, so too does the worker. And so, if the worker says 25 hours beforehand, you know what, I actually will not be able to work that role, they can cancel it, and it's no penalty to them. They're able to do it. If they do it with less than 24 hours notice, we have something called a Flex Level system, where we kind of give bronze, silver, gold, so on status to all of our workers. And if they cancel or show up late or no show or something like that, that will impact their rating. And ultimately, that rating comes with a number of benefits, as well as the ability for them to get first right of refusal and earliest notice on a lot of the best shifts. So, in certain circumstances, if they do it late also, they will have a penalty as well. But if they do it with more than 24 hours notice, that is a nice thing, right? If you called in to your employer once a week and a day before, 25 hours before, and said, hey, I'm not able to work, you would probably not end up holding down that job too long. But with our technology and our system, as long as you give us 24 hours notice, it's fine, and there's no penalty to you. So, you're able to continue to pick up work as you need in the future.

Jeremy Cline [00:41:46]:
Presumably, parents could find that difficult. I'm just thinking, you don't know 24 hours in advance that there's a stomach bug floating around the class, and suddenly, you're going to have to spend the day looking after your child.

James Terry [00:41:59]:
I mean, definitely, it's not perfect, but I think that's where the balance and the trade off is. You're right that parents may not know. We have to take both parts of this marketplace into account though, because an employer is also relying on someone. And if there's only four hours notice between when someone is booked and when they cancel on until the shift starts, then I could be left in the lurch a little bit. And so, we really see that 24 hours, a whole day beforehand, typically is a good balance between the needs of the employer and the employee. And we really try to incentivize them on both sides to ensure that, once you hit that 24-hour mark, it's really important if you're an employer, so that the workers know that they now have a job that they can go and work. Because we don't want a client to cancel a role, and then the worker, all of a sudden, that was money that they were counting on making. On the other hand, the business is saying, well, I was going to need this type of work, this type of employee, this number, this headcount, and now I'm not getting it. And they could be left in a pretty tough situation as well.

Jeremy Cline [00:43:04]:
So, you've got the person who, for whatever reason, would like to do a bit of extra work, maybe earn a little more income, and they've got various options available to them, like a traditional part-time role or starting their own side hustle or the model that we've been talking about. Where's a good place for them to start to figure out which direction to try out?

James Terry [00:43:31]:
I would say the first thing is for them to understand their own situation. What type of consistency are you looking for? What type of flexibility do you need or do you want? And understanding what you can actually commit to is very important. That's probably the first step. From there, I would say, you can go to indeedflex.com, you can go through our interview and onboarding process, and then you can see all the different roles that are out there. Another great component that you can use is, Indeed also has a system where you can actually go through, and it will do job and career coaching. So, it'll ask you a number of questions about, hey, what type of role you want, what are your demands, what are the times you can work. It'll actually do like a mock interview for you, AI, that will give you feedback on the interview questions that you ask. And so, I would say using those types of resources can typically help point you down the right direction.

Jeremy Cline [00:44:26]:
Awesome. And where should people go if they want to find out more about Indeed Flex and this type of model?

James Terry [00:44:33]:
Yeah, it's pretty easy, indeedflex.com if you're in the US, indeedflex.co.uk if you're in the UK.

Jeremy Cline [00:44:40]:
Fantastic. James, this has been a really interesting conversation. It's not a model I'd come across before, but I'll be interested to see how this continues to evolve. So, thank you so much for coming on.

James Terry [00:44:50]:
Thanks for your time, Jeremy.

Jeremy Cline [00:44:53]:
Okay. Hope you enjoyed that conversation with James Terry of Indeed Flex. I've got to say I'm intrigued by Indeed Flex and the model they're offering. It was clear from the conversation with James that this isn't going to be for everybody. But if you're one of those people who has a few spare hours, and you'd like to use them to make some additional money, it definitely sounds like it's an option to look into. I really like the way that there are certain parts of the experience which sound like they're designed to slightly level the experience between the employer and employee. There's already websites like Glassdoor where you've got reviews and comments on what different employers are like. It's got to be a good thing to be able to get that feedback. So, having the review section where you can see how many stars an employer has, in the same way that you see how many stars a restaurant has on TripAdvisor, it's got to be a good thing for a bit of extra transparency. You'll find the show notes for this episode at changeworklife.com/220, that's changeworklife.com/220. And I'm interested to know what you think of the model. So, if you go to changeworklife.com/contact, interested to know what you think of the Indeed Flex model. Can you see this being useful? Can you see it being of limited use? Really interested to hear your feedback. It's said that the words you use only account for 7% of your communication, and the remaining 93% is a combination of the tone you use and your body language. Is that true? And if so, how can you use it both to read the nonverbal communication of others and to better present yourself? That's what we're discussing in two weeks' time. It's going to be a really interesting episode. So, subscribe to the show if you haven't already, and I can't wait to see you then. Cheers. Bye.