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Show HN: Staffjoy Flex – Marketplace Scheduling for Contractors

48 points by philip1209 11y ago

philip1209 11y ago
Today we are launching Staffjoy Flex, which is our product for scheduling independent contractors. Last month, we launched Staffjoy Boss, which is our employee product. The key difference is that, with Flex, we implement a marketplace for scheduling. So, contractors pick the shifts they want - rather than being assigned them. This helps with IC compliance for businesses, while at the same time giving workers long shifts and flexibility. Staffjoy Flex is the result of our research into how contractor-based startups schedule hourly workers. We found that engagement by contractors falls off with each additional step necessary. Collecting availability doesn't scale, and we found that contractor availability changes quickly. With Staffjoy Flex, contractors pick from available shifts, then immediately know whether they are working. This approach scales to thousands of workers without significantly changing the time it takes to schedule. Staffjoy Flex is used to schedule the agents behind a popular chat bot, to manage food delivery logistics, and to manage on-call rotations. The core is Staffjoy’s proprietary algorithms. We match the contractor levels to business demand. This means that a courier company can scale labor to match peak demand for lunch hour, then drop off staffing levels right afterward. We do this while offering configurable shift lengths. We also opened our API this week (docs.staffjoy.com). If you have any questions, we are here to answer them!
- samp615 11y ago
  Looks great!
asimuvPR 11y ago
It would be really nice to be able to play with a demo account before signing up. I know people who could benefit from something like this bu can't tell them to check it out without me seeing the UI first and making sure its simple to use. :)
- noir_lord 11y ago
  Even a quick screen recording of the high notes would help hugely for that, the only screen shots I could find where in the docs and tended to be parts of the UI not the whole thing. I used to be a retail manager before I was a programmer full time, their IT skills on average are terrible so knowing something is easy to use would make it a lot easier to recommend.
  - asimuvPR 11y ago
    Yes, double this. These are people used to using ugly GUIs with either overly big or overly small buttons.
- philip1209 11y ago
  Noted. We're amid a homepage redo that will show these features better. Here is a short overview video that we showed at a conference booth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iNoNLYmcQI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iNoNLYmcQI
  - asimuvPR 11y ago
    Ok, thx for the video link. It does show a little how it works. Now, question: How is this better than a notebook and or an excel file? That's what the people I know use (for years) and they hardly have issues with shifts. I even looked into building them a "better solution" because I thought I was smarter than them. But nothing I did was better that their own system. By the way, I'm not grilling you publicly! Just really interested in what you came up with. :)
    - philip1209 11y ago
      Go for it! For this product Flex: 1) Automation. We automatically generate shifts that match demand. Early users have seen costs decrease up to 10% by preventing overscheduling. Most contractor environments have highly-variable needs throughout the day. (Stay tuned - we'll be releasing some integrations with popular workforce data sources to do this even more automatically). 2) Communication. You get race conditions as large workforces try to claim shifts. We handle all of that, and we notify workers about new / changed / available shifts. This doesn't work on a spreadsheet. Plus, workers find out which shifts they are working immediately - there's no waiting on emails or texts. 3) Attendance - we detect truancy for users of our Timeclock. For contractor workforces at scale, seeing who missed a shift is hard. 4) Timezones. We have distributed workforces using Staffjoy, and our app localizes shifts to times. So, agents in the Philippines doing work for US-based bot companies can more easily understand when they are working. For employees, on our Boss plan, the big added advantage is: 4) Compliance. We do rule-based scheduling to enforce many factors of compliance, such as the number of hours per week somebody may be scheduled.
bikamonki 11y ago
Big typo on home page: "Contactors"
- philip1209 11y ago
  Whoa. Thanks for the heads up. New build going out now.
educar 11y ago
Typo in headline: Contactors Edit: oops, already reported by someone else
rpedela 11y ago
What is an example use case? When I think independent contractor, I think freelance work which doesn't necessarily have shifts.
- philip1209 11y ago
  For Flex, here are some uses: * Managing the agents behind "AI Bots". They routinely have to staff contractors (e.g. Amazon Turk / Upwork) to do basic tasks. * Managing couriers. We have app-based food services internationally that use Staffjoy to schedule bike, scooter, car, etc drivers based on order volume. They like that our algorithms vary staffing levels to match order volume. * Managing on-call rotations, e.g. for support. We had one user "stress test" a video game by scheduling contractors 24/7 to play it.
safdeep 11y ago
Looks pretty good. congrats

48 points by philip1209 11y ago

Today we are launching Staffjoy Flex, which is our product for scheduling independent contractors. Last month, we launched Staffjoy Boss, which is our employee product. The key difference is that, with Flex, we implement a marketplace for scheduling. So, contractors pick the shifts they want - rather than being assigned them. This helps with IC compliance for businesses, while at the same time giving workers long shifts and flexibility. Staffjoy Flex is the result of our research into how contractor-based startups schedule hourly workers. We found that engagement by contractors falls off with each additional step necessary. Collecting availability doesn't scale, and we found that contractor availability changes quickly. With Staffjoy Flex, contractors pick from available shifts, then immediately know whether they are working. This approach scales to thousands of workers without significantly changing the time it takes to schedule. Staffjoy Flex is used to schedule the agents behind a popular chat bot, to manage food delivery logistics, and to manage on-call rotations. The core is Staffjoy’s proprietary algorithms. We match the contractor levels to business demand. This means that a courier company can scale labor to match peak demand for lunch hour, then drop off staffing levels right afterward. We do this while offering configurable shift lengths. We also opened our API this week (docs.staffjoy.com). If you have any questions, we are here to answer them!

samp615 11y ago
Looks great!

asimuvPR 11y ago

It would be really nice to be able to play with a demo account before signing up. I know people who could benefit from something like this bu can't tell them to check it out without me seeing the UI first and making sure its simple to use. :)

noir_lord 11y ago
Even a quick screen recording of the high notes would help hugely for that, the only screen shots I could find where in the docs and tended to be parts of the UI not the whole thing. I used to be a retail manager before I was a programmer full time, their IT skills on average are terrible so knowing something is easy to use would make it a lot easier to recommend.
- asimuvPR 11y ago
  Yes, double this. These are people used to using ugly GUIs with either overly big or overly small buttons.
philip1209 11y ago
Noted. We're amid a homepage redo that will show these features better. Here is a short overview video that we showed at a conference booth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iNoNLYmcQI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iNoNLYmcQI
- asimuvPR 11y ago
  Ok, thx for the video link. It does show a little how it works. Now, question: How is this better than a notebook and or an excel file? That's what the people I know use (for years) and they hardly have issues with shifts. I even looked into building them a "better solution" because I thought I was smarter than them. But nothing I did was better that their own system. By the way, I'm not grilling you publicly! Just really interested in what you came up with. :)
  - philip1209 11y ago
    Go for it! For this product Flex: 1) Automation. We automatically generate shifts that match demand. Early users have seen costs decrease up to 10% by preventing overscheduling. Most contractor environments have highly-variable needs throughout the day. (Stay tuned - we'll be releasing some integrations with popular workforce data sources to do this even more automatically). 2) Communication. You get race conditions as large workforces try to claim shifts. We handle all of that, and we notify workers about new / changed / available shifts. This doesn't work on a spreadsheet. Plus, workers find out which shifts they are working immediately - there's no waiting on emails or texts. 3) Attendance - we detect truancy for users of our Timeclock. For contractor workforces at scale, seeing who missed a shift is hard. 4) Timezones. We have distributed workforces using Staffjoy, and our app localizes shifts to times. So, agents in the Philippines doing work for US-based bot companies can more easily understand when they are working. For employees, on our Boss plan, the big added advantage is: 4) Compliance. We do rule-based scheduling to enforce many factors of compliance, such as the number of hours per week somebody may be scheduled.

bikamonki 11y ago

Big typo on home page: "Contactors"

philip1209 11y ago
Whoa. Thanks for the heads up. New build going out now.

educar 11y ago

Typo in headline: Contactors Edit: oops, already reported by someone else

rpedela 11y ago

What is an example use case? When I think independent contractor, I think freelance work which doesn't necessarily have shifts.

philip1209 11y ago
For Flex, here are some uses: * Managing the agents behind "AI Bots". They routinely have to staff contractors (e.g. Amazon Turk / Upwork) to do basic tasks. * Managing couriers. We have app-based food services internationally that use Staffjoy to schedule bike, scooter, car, etc drivers based on order volume. They like that our algorithms vary staffing levels to match order volume. * Managing on-call rotations, e.g. for support. We had one user "stress test" a video game by scheduling contractors 24/7 to play it.

safdeep 11y ago

Looks pretty good. congrats