What's the need?

Marketplaces for Slivers-of-Time address an entrenched failure in the labour market. Millions of people want to work around other commitments in their life. Many employers need access to a pool of top-up workers who can be turned on and off by the hour as required.

Who needs to sell? Who wants to buy?

Government commissioned research shows the latent demand for this market. 13.7m people need to "sell their hours" around other commitments at some point each year in the UK. 67% of people who have a need for Slivers-of-Time Working want to try it immediately. If just 5% of them take it up, the taxpayer could save £400m a year.

• Market research into Slivers-of-Time

A new market:

Not convinced this market doesn't work at the moment? Try this two part test:

• Drop into a high street recruitment agency or Jobcentre. Tell them you're available for work this morning, possibly this afternoon but you'll confirm after lunch. You'd like to do a bit of work this evening once the kids are in bed. Tomorrow? You'll have to let them know after breakfast. And this is the way you'll always be available to work. Unless they're actively looking for loss-leaders, they'll send you away.
• Now phone that same agency. Tell them you're a small business that suddenly needs an hour of envelope stuffing this morning, someone else to do 90 minutes of leafleting commuters at the end of the day and some ad hoc cleaning at the end of an event this evening. Oh, and that's the way you expect to book your contingent labour all the time. They may do their best to help you, but someone is going to have to absorb meaty overheads and risk of failure on those 3 bookings.

A new generation of Slivers-of-Time marketplaces make this way of working and hiring mundane, cost effective and enticing. Slivers-of-Time Working is not right for everyone. But the efficiencies it offers can create benefits all round:

Sellers can work around other commitments while building a track record of reliability and wide ranging experience. Individuals with a past history of unemployment or problems can create a new "CV" of wide ranging work in a few weeks.

• What can it do for Sellers?

Buyers gain a pool of motivated, ultra flexible, top-up workers. That resource can be matched exactly with need, day-by-day, hour-by-hour.

• What can it do for Buyers?

Agencies gain a new channel. Agency temping makes up only 17.5% of irregular work in the UK. Slivers-of-Time bookings are currently fiddly, overhead ridden and in danger of non fulfillment. These new marketplaces can turn them into an annuity revenue stream.

• What can it do for Agencies?

The taxpayer can save £100m's a year in benefits payments and new tax receipts. That's according to independent research.

• What can it do for Government?

Downsides

Of course, there are downsides if this way of working really takes off. But the world is changing. It may be that the alternatives to Slivers-of-Time are worse for those who fear workforce casualisation.

• Downsides to Slivers-of-Time Working
• How do these markets work?