From Slivers-of-Time to Full-Time

Staff Required SignGetting people off benefits into a conventional job can be support-intensive and expensive. Often it means persuading individuals to take a job for which they have limited enthusiasm. Employers induced to take labour market newbies can offer limited opportunites. These are well-documented realities of cutting benefit rolls. Another way is emerging.

 

Slivers-of-Time Working is not a magic bullet solution to worklessness. It relies on some flexibility and drive in the work-seeker. But, think of the 16-hours-work-a-week barrier (the point at which most claimants come off welfare) not as one gigantic step from ground level. Instead, see it as the end of a ramp. The incline is made up of personalized “mini-jobs”.

Some of the sellers in our pilot entered the market hoping to find a conventional job. A few used it to support themselves while job-seeking. On this page, we’ve focused on some of those who demonstrably landed a job because of Slivers-of-Time Working. The marketplace helps sellers into work by:

  • Giving them an instantly printable, verifiable, “My Bookings” list of every assignment
  • Allowing employers to “try before they buy”, seeing candidates at work rather than in interview
  • Providing an atomized, non-daunting, route into the labour market.

Exploiting the track record

HelimHelim Uddin is 20. He’s just finished a 6 month contract as a personal advisor with youth service Connexions. Before that, his only experience of conventional employment was a Saturday job in a clothing store. But inbetween he clocked up a credible Slivers-of-Time track record [Bookings: 32, Hours Sold: 109, Buyers: 3] It was critical at the interview. As Helim says “It showed that I’d done portering, market research, admin. work, leafleting, stewarding and training. Slivers-of-Time is Wicked.”

AmbereenSome of the sellers didn’t even have Saturday jobs as a starting point. Ambreen Akhtar, 26, explains “I had no experience of work whatsoever before Slivers”. She racked up [Bookings: 59, Hours Sold: 338, Buyers: 15]. Those 15 employers were a clincher, now she’s happily full-time as a tutor for Learn Direct.

JoelSometimes, just starting to sell Slivers-of-Time can galvanise career prospects. Joel Ebong is 39 and had a background in the financial sector until he lost his job. Finding another proved tough until a friend told him about Slivers. Then with a mere [Bookings: 7, Hours Sold: 15, Buyers: 2] on his personal milometer he applied for a job in parking enforcement. Now he’s on contract but says “if the contract comes to an end I’ll definitely be selling Slivers again”.

 

Hired by a buyer

Employers in the Slivers-of-Time pilot quickly cottoned on to the value of hiring sellers who’d already completed multiple bookings on their premises. Many of those candidates would normally have been rejected at the application stage, they didn’t have the formal skills required. But they did know their way round the organisation, had shown their diligence and achieved some favourable word of mouth over several short bookings.

 

Text Box: East Thames Housing Association, the biggest buyer in the pilot, have taken several of their Slivers-of-Time workers onto the payroll. Arankumar Soundaramourty used Slivers as a way of staying off benefits while job seeking. But at the [Bookings: 23, Hours Sold: 58, Buyers: 3] mark he was approached by an ETHA manager and asked if he would apply for a new vacancy as Admin. Assistant.

Text Box: xSonia Ibrahim, 29 [Bookings: 92, Hours Sold: 508, Buyers: 8] started working the Slivers way because of complex childcare needs. But a new husband solved the problem and she decided to get a normal job. “I always wanted to work for East Thames but I could never get accepted for an interview. But bookings there for Slivers-of-Time let them see my potential”, she says . Now she runs the reception desk for their Repairs and Maintenance department.


Text Box: Pick up the phone to East Thames and you may be speaking to Contact Centre Advisor Chad Smith aged 26. He’s taken a break from the Slivers market after reaching [Bookings: 23, Hours Sold: 698, Buyers: 3]. “East Thames like my work. They started booking me for longer and longer bookings then offered me full time work” he explained.

 



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