Introducing the WorkerTech Dispatch — a publication bringing you insights and tools for a fairer future of work

Can you imagine a world where everyone has access to decent work and fair pay? What does a future of fair work look like, and how can technology help improve workers’ prospects and power?

Back in 2016, when we first partnered with the Resolution Foundation, we set out with these questions to find and invest in startups that improve people’s working lives on low pay or in insecure employment. Since then, we’ve invested in ventures like Organise, making better work possible through their strong network of over one million people campaigning for better working conditions. Or TaskHer, who are building a bookings platform to address the gender imbalance in the trades industry, and backed many more talented founders delivering on the promise to improve the lives of low-income workers in the UK.

We now find ourselves in a time where the issues surrounding low pay and precarious or insecure work have been exacerbated by the global health and economic crisis and are intrinsically intertwined with other aspects of our lives. Recent innovations linked to the future of work have mainly focused on managing people or delivering groceries, automating tasks and processes, but lack the ambition to tackle systemic and structural problems millions of workers face. In some cases, adding technology to work can create additional problems of surveillance and micro-management, as highlighted in the recent APPG Future of Work report.

The impact of the pandemic on livelihoods has been devastating, especially on those in insecure and informal work with no savings. As we emerge from the pandemic, 1 in 5 low paid workers in the UK has an insecure job. Moreover, the lack of social safety nets and the rise of the gig economy with many more workers in precarious work has especially left low paid workers vulnerable, who continue to bear the brunt of the crisis.

Our vision for a fairer future of work hasn’t changed. We believe that there are opportunities for ventures to address the many challenges surrounding worker pay, power and progression. We need better solutions to improve the poor working conditions and lack of social protection, find new ways to reskill and upskill disadvantaged workers, prepare young people for a drastically changed labour market and economic transformation towards a net-zero economy.

What has changed since 2016 is that together with the Resolution Ventures team and the members of the WorkerTech partnership we not only have the capital to invest into teams developing solutions for a fairer future of work in the UK. But also the resources, knowledge and skills, tapping into the wisdom of WorkerTech founders in our portfolio to help budding entrepreneurs develop their ideas and help them get ready for investment and exponential growth.

That is why we’re excited to launch the WorkerTech Dispatch — a new publication to guide founders and everyone interested in shaping a fairer future of work.

As early-stage investors, we see many brilliant ideas emerge. Unfortunately, opportunity is not equally distributed. So we want to provide founders with the knowledge to really build on their ideas. Over the following months, we’ll publish research into the problems areas and market opportunities for WorkerTech, how to conduct user research with low-income workers, different considerations for incorporation, how to validate your impact as a WorkerTech venture, and so much more.

We hope that this series will inspire people from all walks of life to build a future that enables everyone to access decent work and pay and improve the prospects and power of workers.

So make sure to follow this publication and receive a monthly article diving deeper into the world of WorkerTech and join our WorkerTech community.

Investing in WorkerTech startups

Through our work with the Resolution Ventures, we support early-stage teams building tech for good ventures that benefit adults in work or going into work in the UK that are:

• low-paid workers, or those with limited prospects
• insecure workers: those on zero-hours contracts, temporary contracts, the self-employed, gig workers, workers in insecure conditions
• workers lacking voice & representation and those at greater risk of discrimination
• workers with lower-level qualifications, and/or limited access to training.

For investments at the very early stages (pre-product, pre-revenue), check out BGV’s 12-week Tech for Good programme (applications will open on 24th November). For investments at the later stages, head over to Resolution Ventures’ website for more details.

This series is brought to you by Bethnal Green Ventures in partnership with Resolution Ventures, the venture arm of Resolution Foundation, a think-tank focused on improving the living standards of those on low-to-middle incomes.