ShiftPixy Adds IBM Watson to Gig Worker Management Service

ShiftPixy App

Gig-worker platform provider ShiftPixy has integrated IBM’s Watson across its platform to improve its user experience. Specifically, the company said its current mobile gateway app uses Watson to power its entire employee enrollment process.

With Watson’s AI capabilities, Irvine, Calif.-based ShiftPixy said it can now guide new hires “by a conversation with our chatbot ‘Pixy,’ who asks the necessary questions and generates the required employment documents in a highly personal and engaging way,” explained Scott Absher, ShiftPixy’s CEO.

ShiftPixy AppAbsher said leveraging AI “is in line” with the company’s other tools because it enables it to keep pace “with our rapid growth.” By using the AI-enabled Pixy as a “coach” during onboarding, the system streamlines and scales the process in a way that’s personalized to each worker.

Earlier this month, ShiftPixy integrated blockchain into its system as a digital ledger for HR transactions. At the time, Absher called blockchain “one of the most efficient tools available to help us protect our data from cyber interference,” and said, “any data considered to be a human capital validation point or part of the hiring and onboarding process is being utilized and recorded in ShiftPixy’s blockchain ledger.”

Interestingly, ShiftPixy’s press release goes out of its way to “be clear” that the company has never and will never use blockchain technology for cryptocurrency or cryptocurrency related applications. ShiftPixy said it’s attracted to blockchain’s security and auditing transparency and its ability to protect both employees and employers.

ShiftPixy matches businesses with qualified part-time workers. The company serves as the official employer, offering employees access to benefits while allowing them to select shift work at a variety of establishments in the ShiftPixy ecosystem. ShiftPixy handles the administrative and compliance tasks for customers employer through its app.

ShiftPixy positions itself as a next-generation staffing agency that handles administration, payroll, insurance and HR management through a SaaS-based application through “a single ecosystem.” It also provides ACA-compliance support. Its customers, which it calls “operators” pay a monthly subscription fee. Some workers (“shifters”) pay what the company calls “a small monthly user fee” to join the service, and so gain access to shift opportunities, on their own.

The company says it serves as the employer for “thousands of qualified shift workers.” Its app-based service syncs work opportunities posted by participating employers with the availability of local shift workers in real time. The company plans to expand into the transportation, services and healthcare verticals, and is considering moves into “high volume markets” such as New York, Chicago, Orlando and Dallas.

According to Zacks, the company should have been billing at a roughly $290 million run rate once all new customers signed by the end of November 2017 were fully boarded.

Image: ShiftPixy

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