You’ve probably wondered before what the best way is to attract workers to your business with on-demand labor. It’s not always easy to tell, especially if you’re used to scheduling workers by the week like most companies are. However, on-demand labor gives you the option to post daily work opportunities, so how are you supposed to know when to use this option?
At Veryable, we see businesses post work opportunities to our on-demand labor platform all sorts of ways, so we’ve seen what tends to work better for different businesses at different stages in their use of on-demand labor. We call these posts “Ops,” and I’ll be sharing tips based on the data we have from real businesses using our platform.
In this article, you’ll learn when to post single-day Ops, when to post multi-day Ops, and the pros and cons of each approach when it comes to finding workers for your business through on-demand labor.
If you could only pick one way to post, single-day Ops would be the best way to post for on-demand labor. That is an oversimplification, because of course you always have the choice of how to post.
But if you want to optimize your posts to get the most bids so you have the most options of Operators to choose from, single-day Ops are the way to go.
When you post single-day Ops, you open the possibilities to more workers. Most workers have other commitments, so if you post an Op for five days and there are workers out there who could have worked two of them but not all five, you lost potential bids.
But if you posted the same Op as multiple single-day work opportunities, those people could have bid on just the days they were able to attend. Would you rather have more bids spread across different workers on different days, or less bids but have the same people every day?
Before you answer, consider this: what if someone showed up for a four-day Op and you didn’t like the work they did on day one? Now you might need a different worker for all three remaining days. This wouldn’t be a problem if you posted as single-day Ops. You’d be able to just move on with the strategy you were already using.
On Veryable’s platform, 72% of Operators like the flexibility of our app and 54% use it to find secondary sources of income. This makes a strong case for posting your work as single-day Ops, because workers on the platform are saying they value flexibility and have other commitments.
If you post your Ops as single-day, you’ll have to rate and adjust after each day instead of doing this after a stretch of days. This does require time each day, so be aware that you will be making this tradeoff to get better results out of your posting.
If you’re just starting out with on-demand labor, it’s almost always better to post single-day Ops. This will help you quickly attract a variety of Operators so that you can build your labor pool and start to see the greatest value from on-demand labor. If you’re more experienced with on-demand labor, we’d still recommend posting single-day Ops, especially if you’re posting outside your labor pool.
Multi-day Ops are typically good to post after you’ve built your labor pool at least 75% of the way to its target size. You can post them sooner than that, but we don’t recommend it until you’re very comfortable with using Veryable and have built up a labor pool.
Multi-day Ops save you time when posting, rating, and making any necessary adjustments. In some cases, Operators in your labor pool might express that they prefer to work multiple days at a time. You will only know this if you ask them or test out multi-day Op postings to your labor pool.
The cons of posting multi-day Ops are the inverse of the pros of posting single-day Ops. You might not get as many bids, because if you post for Monday through Thursday you’re going to miss out on bids from any Operators who were only unavailable on Tuesday.
Remember that less than half of Operators are using the work they find on Veryable as a primary source of income, and 72% of them say they value flexibility. Multi-day Ops are naturally less flexible than single-day Ops, so you might not be matching the workers’ preferences and they could lose interest in your post.
You should post multi-day Ops if you have a labor pool built at least 75% of the way to its target or if you know that there’s interest in your multi-day Ops. You can find out if there’s interest in multi-day Ops by testing the marketplace via trial and error with your posts, or by asking Operators in your labor pool if they’re interested in multi-day Ops.
If you do post multi-day Ops, you should post Ops that are 2-4 days in length and post them 2-3 days in advance to maximize the number of bids you get and attendance to the Op.
Whichever strategy you choose, you can be certain that on-demand labor is the most flexible way to find labor when you need it.
You might be wondering about single-day Op postings, “How do I know who’s coming in each day if it’s always a different person?” Our answer to that is the labor pool. You can add the workers you like to your labor pool, and then specifically invite them to bid on your Op. If they pass up the Op, you can always accept new Operators, and you’re in charge the whole time. We don’t accept workers for you, and we believe this benefits your business and the platform as a whole.
With multi-day Ops, you’ll know it’s going to work if you’re able to fill your Ops and maintain your labor pool by posting this way. It’s not for everyone, but businesses have made it work before, and we aren’t going to keep you from doing it this way.
You can always reach out to your local Veryable representatives, who will make recommendations as your business continues to grow on the platform.
If you’re worried that you might not be able to find workers fast enough to change up your posting strategy, read our blog on how fast you can find on-demand workers to see for yourself that there’s always a way to make it work for your business.
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