Apps offer part-time, no-commitment gigs
LONDON – For months, Gabrielle Walker had been looking for a part-time job. She applied to restaurant chains and retailers, and she scoured the job search site Indeed.
Then one day, Walker, a 19-year-old student at University College London, was scrolling through TikTok and stumbled on a video about an app called Stint. A face on the screen explained that Stint could help students earn money by working brief temporary stints at places like restaurants and bars that require little training or experience.
Walker downloaded the app, took a 15-minute intro course and days later snagged a job polishing cutlery at a Michelin-star restaurant in London for one day. Between May and June, she took on several other gigs, squeezing them into her class schedule where she could.
Stint, in use across the U.K., has grown in popularity, alongside similar apps in the United States like Instaworks and Gigpro, as one response to the peculiar ways in which economies have been rebounding from the pandemic recession. Uncertainty about the durability of the recoveries and the tentative re-openings of businesses still threatened by the coronavirus have made flexibility a top priority for workers and employees alike.
As the hospitality industry, in particular, confronts worker shortages, these apps are helping form an ultra-shortterm worker-employee relationship, something that hasn’t widely existed in recent decades.
In contrast to Stint, Instaworks and Gigpro are suited more for skilled or experienced workers who want or need short-term shifts. Collectively, the newer apps represent a variation on the many gig apps that sprang up in recent years – from Uber and DoorDash to TaskRabbit and Thumbtack – that typically serve households in need of a onetime service. What distinguishes the latest apps is that they link workers with employers that have a steady need for labor but don’t necessarily want to commit to permanent hires given the uncertainties from the pandemic.
Not everyone is celebrating the trend. UKHospitality, the leading trade association for Britain’s hospitality sector, suggested that while businesses are used to innovating, the economic forces that have created staff shortages in the industry could pose enduring problems.
The association, along with the British Beer and Pub Association and the British Institute of Innkeeping, asserted that the road to recovery requires that the government “put in place the right trading environment,” including an expansion of business tax cuts. UKHospitality has also urged an overhaul of post-Brexit visa rules to make it easier for foreigners to work in the industry.
The use of apps to connect businesses and workers for short-term gig work appears to be a growing trend in the United States as well.