Intro
Hi. I’m Mathias Linnemann from Worksome and this is our tech talk.

The Market Problem
The market problem is interesting because it’s not a new problem that just occurred during COVID. What we’re looking at are two major underlying factors that are changing the world of work:
One is the great resignation. People simply quit their jobs when they’re not satisfied.
The other thing is talent scarcity. There just aren’t enough skilled people to meet the demand globally, especially skilled people in the midst of their career, who will change jobs if they don’t like where they are.
And therefore, companies are really struggling to find talent in an organized way. When governments are looking into this, it also means that companies will need great technology to make sure that they are doing things right. And that’s part of what Worksome is building

A problem in the market is that a lot of the technology solutions to help both freelancers and companies thrive in this new world of work are not built for this new world of work. So a lot of companies and freelancers are dependent on technology that is simply too old and fragmented and not designed for speed, flexibility and agility. There is an opportunity for a company like Worksome, to enter the space with totally modern technology built for this age and built for speed and ease of use.

About Worksome
We were born in Denmark in 2017, and today we’re 100 people across New York, London and Copenhagen and are quickly expanding around the world.

USPs
What companies need today is access to the best talent, fast. And a way to remove all the friction around working with these people. That’s why at Worksome we make it easy to find new talent, either via our marketplace of thousands of vetted freelancers or by your own direct talent pool that you bring onto the platform. Basically freelancers that you’ve worked with in the past and those you trust or via all your suppliers, recruitment agencies, vendors, etc. that gives you essentially access to the best talent really fast. It gives you a compliant and robust, super simple and fast process, and it saves you a ton of money by removing all the friction and making sure that you can move faster than your competition.
Because talent is probably the most important resource you have.

Tech and key features
The experience of using Worksome as a company is simple. You go onto the platform and you look for talent, either in the pool of people that you have invited and which you trust onto the platform or via our marketplace of highly vetted talent of thousands of freelancers. Or you can work with all your third party vendors, suppliers, recruitment agencies right there in the same tool.

We take all the processes involved in working with large numbers of freelancers and make it very easy for both parties. We take care of compliant contracts, worker classification, timesheet approvals, PO numbers, billing, contract overviews, as well as compliant payments and tax in all the countries Worksome is live in. What that means is that companies and freelancers alike get a very good experience. They’re always paid on time. They know when they will be paid. From the company’s perspective, You always know what’s happening in your freelance workforce, how many you have working for you, where they’re working, what they’re doing, and how much money you’re paying them. And that means that companies are, for the first time ,able to really strategize proactively around their contingent workforce, which helps them overcome challenges in the world of work today, and become very competitive because they can gain access to better talent faster than competition.

Impact
Companies that don’t have a system like worksome generally find that their freelance workforce is a mess. They don’t know how many people are working for them. They don’t know where they’re working. They don’t know how much money they spend, and they don’t have any one who is owning the strategy around the contingent workforce, which means that they’re just plugging gaps and playing catch up in terms of making all of this work. With worksome, the impact that we have on organization sets, that they have access to better talent faster, fast and seamless processes that are 100% compliant, and they save money because they’re not reliant on third party vendors and recruiters – and because they always have access to the right talent.

Quirks and Limitations
Worksome is most valuable for companies that have from five to thousands of freelancers. We don’t tend to work with a lot of small companies that work with very few freelancers. The reason being that you need to work with quite a lot of freelancers before you run into the problems of friction, compliance requirements, managing payments at scale, etc.

Tech Stack
One of the things we wanted to build when we started works on was one stand alone end to end system, because we can see that a lot of the clients before Worksome have come from a patchwork of different systems and different technologies, and so we’ve build Worksome so that our clients can manage, on board, hire and pay an entire contingent workforce on one standalone system. We do that and ensure that it’s compliant, robust, transparent and super fast.

Pricing, onboarding, adoption
Our pricing is super simple and transparent. We charge a flat fee of 5% on whatever you’re spending on your contingent workforce. Onboarding is generally really fast. You basically tell us who all your freelancers are and we help you invite all of them to the platform and then you’re good to go. But of course, it depends on how big your company is and how complex your freelance workforce is – and how many people in your company are hiring and working with freelancers. We have dedicated onboarding and customer success teams that help you both onboard and manage worksome as you go live. t The stakeholders involved depend on the company size. If it’s small and medium businesses, it’s typically the CEO or whoever is hiring and managing all the freelancers. And if it’s larger companies, it’s often a combination of procurement, H.R. finance, and then whoever in the business is hiring freelancers.

Top Tips
My top tip for any company these days is to fully understand what’s happening in the world of work and why we see a massive increase in the freelance workforce.
My next tip is, of course, to use the right technology to make all of this into a competitive advantage and be proactive. So that you have access to the best talent faster and cheaper than your competition.