How has COVID-19 changed the FM industry?

The FM industry has massively stepped up to the plate since COVID-19 took a grip of the UK, during this crisis the industry has been given the recognition it has always deserved, as a key element of the UK workforce; something which I hope continues when things begin to return to normality. The industry and it’s workforce deserve it. This hasn’t always been the case, many of our clients tell us about how their clients push down pay rates, which will only stifle quality and the ability to attract people to work in FM.

What can we take from these conditions and come out better on the other side as an industry?

Being more open to new approaches; does it have to take a crisis like the one we’re going through now to embrace new technology, which can actually make businesses more efficient? This pandemic has brought a great deal of pain and worry, but it has also provided opportunity for individuals and businesses to slow down and assess where they could be doing things better.

The FM industry hasn’t necessarily had to innovate as it’s always been rather strong, but with lockdown now in place management teams have had to embrace home-working, including lots of Zoom calls, 1:1 meetings and leveraging more tech-enabled tools to complete their day-to-day tasks.

Why is digitalisation the future in the FM industry?

A crisis usually stimulates a phase of innovation and adoption, we saw this in the last recession with the hotel accommodation industry where consumers opted for cheaper alternatives (Airbnb was founded at this time amongst others), and just after 9/11 with the airline industry taking a huge hit, prompting increased airport security to give people confidence to travel. These new measures are now second nature to many of us.

I think we’re about to see a similar shift in the world of work, and there’s nothing more ripe for innovation than the titanic industry which is FM (which forms 10% of the global workforce). Like many aspects of life right now, people are restricted from meeting, so sourcing, on-boarding and retaining staff members will be difficult. We’re thankful for our forward-thinking clients such as ISS, G4S, OCS as they embrace technology and help us build-out finding new ways to make their companies more efficient, and generally better companies to serve their clients.

How does Broadstone fit into these changes?

It’s pretty clear that people’s appetite for work is changing, but companies’ methods of hiring haven’t yet. This is where we step in. We build products and tools that are relevant to how people now want to work, and make our clients a more attractive proposition to a workforce that has a growing fondness for utilising technology in their work-life, just as they are doing with every other aspect of their lives. People power work. And we provide power to people to support their entire ‘work-life’ stack, from sourcing work opportunities, being background checked more quickly and paid when they need it.

Companies - Fill Shifts in Minutes

You wouldn’t be a founder if you didn’t believe in the business you were running. But it’s also nice to wakeup and have your beliefs validated by one of the world’s leading venture capitalists.

A16Z’s Andrew Chen called the service economy the next $10trillion opportunity (click here for the link). Despite this, only 7% of those services used the internet to support their transactions.

We’re out to change that with Broadstone.

In an age where people want speed and transparency at the click of a button on their mobile phone, recruitment and staffing is still a cumbersome process which is getting worse as labour markets tighten; slow for employers and painful for the job seeker.

Broadstone’s “Labour-as-a-Service” staffing platform allows job seekers to find fair and flexible temporary work opportunities with large corporates working in traditional, regulated industries such as security, cleaning and logistics. Many of which have been left behind in the wake of tech giants such as Uber, Deliveroo and JustEat. They have been hugely successful demonstrating that people find a more flexible, tech-driven approach to work very appealing.

There’s no reason security professionals should have to spend hours searching for work opportunities when taxi drivers can get hundreds every hour through an app.

The challenge with any regulated industy is progressing innovation and not being left behind, the landscape for the secuirty officer has now changed; there’s more flexible, frictionless ways to find work driven through gig-marketplaces.

Using AI and automation to solve complex tasks that large traditonal labour providers handle on a day-today basis is key, tasks such as pay, scheduling, background checking, employer-jobseeker matching and performance management.

We’re 10 months into building our product, and each month it improves. Not just the product, but the community too. There’s nothing more rewarding than having these moments where what you’re working so hard for becomes validated by a thought leader within the industry.

Thank you Andrew Chen for the reminder of the opportunity we’ve got.

The service industry is ripe for innovation. It’s up to us now to deliver.

The Big Opportunity: Service Economy Marketplaces was originally published in Broadstone App on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.