Gig economy

The key requirement is a digital platform that enables workers to analyse their income and expenses from the gig economy platforms they use, and translate this into useful, actionable insights that help the gig worker understand their financial position, whether they are paid the London Living Wage of £10.85 per hour, and plan and have more agency over their work. Ideally, it would be able to analyse the data to report collectively, to work out trends for specific employers or types of employers.

• Gig economy workers better understand how expenditure relates to their pay and impacts on their ability to meet the cost of living.
• Data captured by the solution helps the Living Wage Foundation and other stakeholders to set expectations for gig economy employers to meet the cost of living for their workforce and ability to offer an accreditation solution in a challenging sector.
• Longer term we hope this results in systemic change that includes more accredited gig economy employer pay rises for tens of thousands of workers.

Finmo’s solution builds on their existing platform, where they provide software for sole traders and multi-job workers to track their income and expenses and a platform to connect with an accountant to affordably file a tax return. They will then develop this further to allow gig economy workers to understand their take-home pay and how their net hourly wage compares to the Living Wage.

The solution will see individuals importing their banking transactions via Open Banking, then answering a series of questions to help Finmo identify which of their income and expenses are for business purposes. Within a few minutes, Finmo will calculate an accurate net hourly wage and provide a comparison to the London Living Wage. We will use the information gathered to prepare a report for the individual.

The modern-day worker is faced with a host of challenges, from sourcing work to filing their tax return. These challenges along with many others can cause financial strain. Finmo is excited to bring year’s of work and expertise in this area and combine it with teams at the Living Wage Foundation and the Mayor of London to make the lives of today’s modern day workers just a little better.

J.D., Finmo Founder & CEO

Designed in partnership with gig workers, Shiffle is pioneering a new way to ensure that gig work is fit and fair for all by helping people build whole incomes from fractions of work and enabling work providing platforms to demonstrate their contributions, in real time.

Shiffle aggregates primary data, enabling gig workers to see their whole income (earned and expected) as well as how much each source is contributing. This puts their earnings in their control while maintaining flexibility for all. Shiffle empowers both gig workers and platforms by enabling a range of new services that fundamentally enhance financial inclusion, security and transparency while helping to evolve the future of work.

As a team, Shiffle has a passion to help to make the gig economy work better for both people and platforms. Being able to partner with the Resilience Fund and the Living Wage Foundation to help realise that vision is amazing and we’re really excited to begin that work together.

Financial Freedom wants to create a platform that provides freelance workers with a one-stop shop to manage their finances, ensuring they have enough cash flow day-to-day and ‘runway’ between jobs. The core value proposition is to bring this information and insight together to reduce stress and improving the mental health of the user.

As a relatively young company, with many of our staff working freelance at some point in their career, we are passionate about providing practical solutions to the complex challenge of not only managing day-to-day finances, but also the knock-on-effect on improving mental health and wellbeing. For many years now we have worked on some great fintech and consumer apps across the world and are excited to bring some of our experience on ‘what works’ to this challenge.

Alex Holdsworth, Director, Monstarlab

The Workerbird solution helps gig economy workers understand their true hourly rate and whether this meets the London Living Wage. The simple app shows their data in a clear and impactful way helping them plan their finances. Gig economy workers are given valuable insights into their working patterns and can also come together as a group to get a complete picture of conditions across the sector. Our aim is to empower gig economy workers with their own data so they have all the information they need to make the best decisions around their work.

We are thrilled to be part of the Mayor’s Resilience Fund. The Workerbird app currently helps workers track and reflect on their working day to understand their working patterns, pay and feelings about work. We are really looking forward to designing and developing it specifically for gig economy workers – so they can understand their take-home pay and ultimately help them achieve a real living wage.

• The Living Wage Foundation will provide staff time and specialist knowledge about the sector and low pay based on our conversations with gig economy employers so far.
• We will also provide access to workers and employers who can feed into the development of a digital tool, test and pilot it.