THE Covid-19 pandemic has really affected the job market, resulting in many people losing their income or experiencing pay cuts.
As the unemployment rate goes up with very little chance of finding stable employment, at least during this pandemic period, a need has risen for a new "disruptive" opportunity for people who have lost their jobs.
Seeing this worrying situation, re-employment industry veteran Shahryn Azmi, together with his business partners, has initiated a noble effort to help those who lost their source of income by creating a portal that connects them with companies or people who need their expertise on a temporary or "gig" basis.
Hence, the platform MakeTimePay (https://maketimepay.com/) is born, and Shahryn is probably the man to carry out this task.
He has worked in eight different industries and been an expatriate in seven countries.
"Perhaps I am highly experienced in re-employment, both for myself and for thousands of people who I have had the privilege to try and support as they struggled through the same kind of challenges that I myself have gone through," he said.
"I look at what people need most, which is access to opportunities to earn a living. Contrary to some, people are not unwilling to work. They just need help connecting with the best and right opportunities," said Shahryn, who used to helm the Corporate Development Centre (CDC) under Khazanah Nasional, where he managed to help retrenched Malaysia Airlines staff get back on their feet.
"I was privileged to have been able to help up to 35,000 people nationwide," said the former chief executive officer of CDC.
MakeTimePay has three founding partners — Shahryn, Ken Tai (who heads all things tech, UI and UX) and Joe Lam (who heads branding and strategy).
NEW CHALLENGES, FRESH ROLE
The Covid-19 pandemic is estimated to have caused the loss of an additional 190 million jobs worldwide, while those with jobs would have experienced a cut in at least one quarter of their paid working hours.
Shahryn said in April, Malaysia's unemployment rate was 4.6 per cent, with the number of unemployed people at more than 742,700 nationwide.
"Every month, 10,500 Malaysians are losing their jobs. The employment situation of the future is worrying," he said.
On top of that, Malaysians now need to accept the hard truth in the job market today.
"The unemployed are all seeking full-time jobs and those are in short supply. There are full-time job vacancies out there, but they are not in abundance, which means that there will be more disappointments than celebrations when people apply," explained Shahryn.
"When we say 'gig', we are referring to any form of work that is on a short term, or on-demand basis. The most common perception of gig work is people delivering food and groceries, or driving ride-share.
"We have to get away from that mislabelling and consider gigs for what they are — any short-term work for pay," he said.
One of the overlying problems, on top of unemployment, is under-employment, where people with professional qualifications, skills and experience end up delivering food and groceries, or driving ride-share when they should, instead, be doing work that utilises their real capabilities.
"Many of these individuals will say that they would gladly do work according to their professional skills if they only knew where to find such work," said Shahryn.
"Since companies are reluctant to hire on a full-time basis, hiring on an on-demand or 'gig' basis is a great compromise because the organisation still gets the help it needs to complete the task, project or work that needs to get done, but immediately upon completion, the gig worker is released. It is legal and all expectations are met.
"Thus, gig work for all is a win-win because, otherwise, neither party would get anything. The company gets nothing done because they have no help, and the jobseeker gets no income because no one is hiring full-time," he said.
HOW IT WORKS
MakeTimePay is an "on-demand work" ecosystem that is created for today's changing workforce in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and coming of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).
"MakeTimePay democratises work opportunities to enable people to maximise their earning potential by monetising their free time. That's why we called the portal MakeTimePay.
"We believe that one's personal time can be monetised if the individual seeks to do so. All that is needed is to connect them to the opportunities. You cannot do things if you don't know that the task opportunity exists," said Shahryn.
The portal is essentially a marketplace where all "Seekers" (income) and "Posters" (task) can come together for mutual benefit.
"By virtue of the fact that MakeTimePay is for gig work, for all industries, all skills and all ranks, we are already completely different from everyone else.
"For now, we are running a free-mium subscription model, which means that Seekers and Posters can register and use the site at no cost.
"Posters (employers), of course, have to pay the task fee to the individual who will do their work, but that's an obvious must," said Shahryn.
He added that MakeTimePay uniquely ensures that task fees are paid into escrow first, which is something like a deposit of sorts.
"It means that doers would not need to worry that they won't get paid by the employer upon completion of the task because we will confirm that the fee has been deposited before the task commences," he said.
"We know from regional research that gig workers across Asia tend to worry that employers won't pay them when the task is completed.
"Unfortunately, that fear is mostly true. MakeTimePay's mandatory escrow ensures that the doer is paid and the employer is protected too, because the fee is not paid until the task is confirmed to be completed as agreed," said Shahryn.