Nestled amongst businesses selling concrete and gyprock in Sydney’s industrial suburb of Alexandria sits Workfast’s unassuming office.
While the surrounding enterprises are aglow with the fluorescent glare of high visibility vests, here, the space is lit up with the gentle luminosity of computer screens.
“One of the biggest pain-points for business is staffing and every business owner can understand that,” says Workfast co-founder and Managing Director Tim Nieuwenhuis, who alongside his business partner Adrian Moschella, sought out to deploy a software solution to fix that problem.
While the founders are relying on innovative computer technology to address a gap in the market, they are eager not to pigeon themselves as tech nerds.
"Not really in the sense of the programmer, I love finding a software solution to solve a problem and building a business around it - I am more like a business nerd I guess," says Nieuwenhuis.
Workfast was founded 18 months ago by two friends, who have already made commercially successful forays into online platforms. Their track record for success is attributed to having differing but complementary skill sets.
“He [Adrian] has got a lot of experience on his side of business, and I have a lot of experience in mine. When we have a problem, there are often two solutions and we just try to find the best one to match,” says Nieuwenhuis.
The solution this time is an on-demand staffing marketplace that lives online and in-application form. It uses technological algorithms to match workers seeking employment, with businesses short on personnel – often in highly skilled roles.
Free for job seekers to register and upload their resumes, Workfast monetises their platform by charging the company that hires the worker.
The Workfast offices in Alexandria, Sydney. Source: Supplied
"We treat our staff like customers, they aren't just a commodity. We have to get great staff, we have to find them, make sure they don't want to leave us and to have a great experience,” says Nieuwenhuis, “Then we have the company on the other side of the equation, they are our customer as well."
Like digital services Airbnb and Uber, at the core of the offering is a rating system. The workers are provided with a score (based on a star system) at the end of each completed period of employment which carries over to future projects. The better a candidate’s rating from their previous jobs, the more likely they are to get hired for the next project.
"The higher your rating is, the more reliable you are on the jobs, the better the jobs you are going to get, and the more work you are going to get through it. It's good and you can see how you are performing, and it's an incentive to work harder so you can keep yourself working," says a convert of the Workfast platform Ben Horton.
"So far it has been easy to pick up work. The platform is great, it is really easy for them to communicate with you when you are on a job. Everything is done online via email so it isn't like other labour hire jobs where if you miss a call you miss the work," says Horton.
With 200 temporary workers currently placed on jobs and 50,000 on their database, the Sydney-based hub has plans to double year-on-year and recently linked up with Australia Post to facilitate connections at a mass-scale for small businesses seeking talent.
“They are expanding into a wider range of products, and one of them is labour hire - obviously that is the highest turn-over, it's probably something Australia Post wants to look at," says Nieuwenhuis.
Workfast caters to industries like labour hire and hospitality. Source: Supplied
"They approached us and we are going to provide labour solutions for Australia Post customers."
While Workfast’s aspirations are high there are two challenges to overcome - tech and red-tape.
“It is a nightmare, like any business you have any regulations you have to deal with employees and workplaces and many at a time multiplies in complexity, and each state has its own regulations. It is hard but not as hard as building the software to make it work," says Nieuwenhuis.
He also believes they work in concert with – not as a direct threat to the unions.
"We always pay the worker much higher than the award wage. Our average worker earns 28 percent above award wage and they get all the allowances. Everything is looked after for the worker so the unions leave us alone."
