Startup fast-tracks business plans to support industries and workers disrupted by COVID-19 with free job listings
Technology start-up inploi has expanded its online platform to stimulate workforce mobility during the current crisis by connecting jobseekers displaced by the COVID-19 pandemic with employment opportunities in essential industries across the UK. Initially focused on the hospitality sector – and already used by more than 100,000 people to find work with major employers including Park Plaza Hotels and Young’s Pubs – the inploi platform now includes jobs across industries ranging from agriculture to logistics and warehousing to charity and voluntary work.
The diversification of its platform represents an acceleration of inploi’s growth plans in response to the urgent need to reallocate workers following one of the biggest and most sudden labour market shifts since the end of the Second World War, as highlighted by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Matthew de la Hey, co-founder and CEO of inploi, said: “More than 5 million people in the UK are employed in sectors such as retail, hospitality, arts, and entertainment that have been forced to closed as part of the response to COVID-19. With the DWP already having processed nearly a million new Universal Credit applications in recent weeks, we want to help mitigate the impact of the shutdown on people by connecting anyone who has found themselves out of work with opportunities in those sectors where there are now acute labour shortages, such as agriculture, warehousing, delivery, and supermarkets. We’ve had to fast-track our plans for the business, and the team has been working around the clock to fast-track this release, but it’s the right thing to do at this difficult time. We’re thrilled to start helping as many people as we can.”
The service fee – typically starting at £149 for employers to advertise a job, or £199 per month for a subscription to the full software suite – will be waived for those seeking to list opportunities within essential sectors for the duration of the current crisis. The service will continue to be free for those seeking work.
inploi was founded in 2016 to modernise the process of connecting so-called “blue-collar” workers with opportunities. These individuals have historically been poorly served by professionally-focused job sites such as LinkedIn, leaving them dependent on less sophisticated and less reliable online job boards that are ineffective for candidates and expensive for employers. inploi’s integration with Jobs on Facebook and other platforms allows employers to reach millions of people with their open roles, while a proprietary search API gives job seekers easy access to thousands of jobs.
de la Hey said: “For too long, people in service jobs have been inaccurately and unhelpful categorised as ‘low-skilled’ labour, and this has had a knock-on effect on the quality of options available to help them find work. inploi is changing that, providing a platform tailor-made to the needs of employers and employees in these sectors. The ongoing crisis has shone a spotlight on the scale of the everyday impact of the work done by people in service sectors – hopefully, a silver lining of COVID-19 will be a greater and enduring appreciation among policymakers and the general public, and the banishing of the ‘low-skilled’ label.”
inploi co-founder Alex Hanson-Smith added: “We have worked with hundreds of companies and thousands of candidates to understand their problems and their needs. Our updated product is the result of this process and gives users an even better job search experience.”
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