[ezcol_2third]In a supportive platform, quality top-up work can become a regular possibility. It could be a safety net, a way to improve training, or a direct path to a job.
Five impacts of a CEDAH
Work-seekers in the CEDAH (Central Database of Available Hours) area can set terms on which they will sell their time, then effortlessly let the CEDAH sell their available hours across as many types of work as they wish. With so much demand attracted into the CEDAH, that brings new dynamics.
- Labor market entry: “You start Monday” doesn’t work for a lot of those outside the workforce. “Could you do an hour’s work this afternoon, then maybe two hours another day?” fits the needs of people constrained by uncertainties like medical, family or partial employment commitments: or just nervousness. The CEDAH is their personalized on-ramp to the legitimate workforce.
- Interventions: Flexcity is able to allocate budgets for workforce improvement with enormous precision. First aid training to move 50 demonstrably reliable security workers closer to full certification ahead of summer’s events? 6 one-hours of help from an advisor for Moms in poor postalcodes returning to work in January? An immediate $50 of work for the first 180 long term unemployed to register with CEDAH this week? Each initiative could be completed for around $10,000 with need, selection, administration and outputs all transparent.
- Stability: CEDAH workers seeking long term engagement are flagged to employers. By fostering specific commitments and deepened relationships, the system makes it easy to have a portfolio of perhaps 2-3 regular employers with outside buyers only appearing if hours need to be made up suddenly. This kind of semi-regularity makes life easier for both sides.
- Pay: Aggregated hourly earnings data are transparent. Anyone can see trends for their types of work or local area. Using these insights, a receptionist might bump up the hourly rate at which she can be booked by a local vetinary clinic. The clinic may have a we-set-rates policy. But she’s productive and one day they’re desperate. In the meantime, her reliability and adaptability has shown other employers will pay her above average, possibly in unrelated sectors. She can wait for a time when the clinic really need her.
- Progression: “Based on your typical times of availability, your travel area and your track record in bookings for interior decorating, building repair and home viewing supervision you could increase earnings by 20% and bookings by 8% with a further qualification in property damage assessments, click here for training options”. The CEDAH analyses demand/supply in its markets constantly to generate and target these alerts. It may facilitate external investment in training in return for an automatically deducted cut of enhanced earnings.
Comparison: career development
A CEDAH will be used in different ways at different points in life. Consider 50 years in the workforce for one woman.
- Teens: Her first experience of work might be in a CEDAH sub-market supervised by her school. Keen to equip students for the outside world, teachers encourage 14 year olds to list controlled availability then run errands and do tasks. But only families and businesses vetted by the school are able to buy. By 18 she has traded 320 hours in 5 sectors (shopping, parent’s help, gardening, retail assistance and clothing alterations) for 8 buyers, earning several hundred dollars. At 18 she transfers to the open CEDAH market and adds further roles, helping support herself through college.
- Twenties: Her college qualification and CEDAH track record are exhibit A at job interviews. While pursuing a career in fashion retail she lists CEDAH availability for shelf stacking and stock taking, building on reliability established in her school’s gentle sub-market. Store management is the aim, so she is also available for office tasks and data entry to deepen her experience.
- Midlife: With thousands of CEDAH hours, dozens of sectors and 30 buyers under her belt, a trainee store manager job is easily accomplished. She takes all availability out of the CEDAH and concentrates on internal promotion. Aged 35; children arrive, work stops. At 40 she again picks up her CEDAH track record, selling newly enhanced skills when not required for Mom duties.
- Empty-nester: With skills up to date and diversified she quickly finds a full time store management role for 12 years. Her CEDAH account is, again, parked.
- Retirement: Needing to stay active, but prizing recreational and grandparenting time, she CEDAH’s in and out of odd days of work each week. Her lifetime CEDAH reliability is like a pristine driving licence: a ticket to opportunity. She commands a hefty premium from employers while being selective about parameters for bookings she will accept. New social networks follow.
The CEDAH cannot give her everything she wants. No labor market gives lifetime satisfaction. But it puts her in control of hours and – if she is reliable – constantly proffers opportunities for progression to new skills and buyers. The work is stimulating, sometimes demanding. But she’s doing it on her terms.
Meanwhile, in areas with a binary focus on slotting people into jobs, her counterparts have a narrower labor market experience. School clamped down on part-time work as a distraction from exams. College was expensive and theoretical. Paid work was equally essential while studying but haphazard and not correlated to ambitions. Applying for jobs with no employer relationships in place had to be combined with meaningless gigs waiting tables or cleaning houses. Her eventual job was uncertain but desperately needed because there was no deep track record in irregular work to fall back on. Seeking employment after children, or in retirement, meant starting again from scratch.
Protections
A CEDAH’s prime task is unlocking as much employment opportunity as possible then creating a level laying field in which each worker trades on their own terms in pursuit of their personal goals. Once that has ensured a pipeline of quality work, it supports an array of worker protections:
- Minimum earnings: The system prices each possible hour of each possible booking based on factors including: (a) applicable minimum wage (b) the worker’s personal rules. The personal component is important. It ensures for example the time/costs of travelling to a booking do not push earnings below an acceptable level.
- Legal compliance: A CEDAH enforces: (a) maximum hours by age group (b) minimum breaks, by age group (c) banned times of day for younger workers (d) specific controls such as permitted work for international students.
- Payment certainty: Workers enter the market through an intermediary who is legally responsible for payment if a booking is completed as contracted. Intermediaries select acceptable buyers and are responsible for any non-payment. (Spend limits can be automatically managed to minimize this risk.)
Beyond this sort of enforcement, CEDAHs can administer a range of schemes to protect workers:
- Benefits: The need for workers to hold rights to insurance independent of any one employer are widely supported. It’s less clear how such schemes would be administered. A CEDAH could do all the validation, administration and authentication as a seamless element in its granular operations.
- Welfare support: Many territories allow public assistance recipients to combine partial work with benefits. It’s a good way into the labor market and it can eke out entitlements. But administering the reality is often a nightmare. Not with a CEDAH.
- New roles for unions: “I dislike the Acme Motel, in future they can only book me at $25 an hour.” A CEDAH gives workers the ability to set parameters against a specific client. They may choose to become a micro-member of a union and let the union control these settings on their behalf. This kind of individual action makes it harder for Bates’ managers to fill their needs and, if widespread, may be more effective than braziers and pickets outside the gate. More on Opportunities for unions.
Flexi-curity
Being in a low-skilled job rarely confers security any more. Training has increasingly been designed out of the system to strip costs. Middle tier jobs have been computerized so there’s little progression. Your actual employer may be an outsourcer to minimize corporate liabilities. Worker hours are the first cost to be cut if revenue falters.
By contrast, a portfolio of diverse work for an array of organizations can foster depth of skills, confidence and relationships that may be more useful if things look bad. That’s particularly true if there is support available for anyone needing to work flexibly. It’s hard to quantify the impact for workers, but here’s some obvious factors:
- Less compromise: Underpaid? Can’t stand your work? Putting in too many hours away from the family? Can’t afford new skills? A comprehensive flexible work market gives constant alternatives. It may enable “ghost” accounts: sign-ups by someone who wants a weekly report on likely bookings/earnings given their skills/location but is not yet registered in the market. They can of course take the plunge and go live at any time, possibly moonlighting around a job.
- Community: A CEDAH might incentivize “buddy bookings” where friends get booked as a unit. It can enable peer support or volunteering in available hours that don’t get booked. Deepening relationships with target employers is always an option. A new model of irregular work can go far beyond the typical loneliness of gig work now.
- Reassurance: “What if I lose my job?” “How would I support myself if I lost the ability to drive?” “How can I cut my hours as the doctor ordered?” Or just; “How do I earn some pin money for a decent vacation?” A CEDAH is always there, always giving a user honest data about their opportunities and impartially waiting to further their ambitions. Even for a diehard nine-to-fiver it offers peace of mind.
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