How Retailers Can Manage the Growing Contingent of Flex Employees

Last month, supermarket chains Giant Eagle and The Kroger Co. completed implementation of Point Pickup Technologies’ Flex Workforce services, which give both enterprises and workers the ability to match on-demand same-day e-commerce  job opportunities with worker availability and experience. These same-day on-demand flex positions include sorting shifts at warehouses, picking and packing in dark stores, in-store shopping and delivering, on-demand and same-day delivery, and other custom e-commerce work.

Progressive Grocer recently spoke with Tom Fiorita, founder and CEO of Stamford, Conn.-based Point Pickup, about what food retailers must do to adjust to, and ultimately excel in, the flex economy — or, as Fiorita refers to it, the “Care Economy,” which the company defines as “a healthy work environment [that helps] flex workers better manage crucial aspects of their work and lives with job-based rewards and vital services.”

Progressive Grocer: What is the importance of flex workers to the food retail sector?

Tom Fiorita: We all hear, and everybody’s talking, about The Great Resignation, and the future of work and the flex workforces. It’s the future of work, the flex workforce, so we’re enabling the support and the transition to the ultimate flex workforce. 

The importance of the flex workers to food retailers is, No. 1, to compete and be a viable entity in this new world of e-commerce, and the No. 2 part is to drive what I would call retaining good workers and a sustainable life for both the retailer and the worker. It’s really the ability for these companies to be in business in the next five years, with good, supported, retained individuals who like to have a flexible lifestyle. That’s not driven by what I think or what the retailer thinks. It’s driven by what the people think. Some people call it the flex economy. We like to say it’s the Care Economy. It’s a 100-year generational change.

PG: Why was Point Pickup created?

TF: Almost seven years ago, I saw what was happening in the marketplace with Amazon, to be specific — that they were going to take over the world — and I, a local kind of a guy, said, “I am going to build the platform to save all of those retailers, large and small, who are not Amazon.” The second piece was, I wanted to provide an easy-access, supportive system for the people who do the work. They deserve to have all of the opportunities and support, like they were going to be working at a company, and we could provide that. That’s why I started it: to save the retailer and save the worker in the way people would like to live.

PG: How does the solution work, exactly?

TF: For both the retailers and the people who need to do the work, we need to have a plug-and-play system, right? For the folks who are doing the work, they plug in, meaning they have an app and they can put in time, day, type of work, all skill sets, with easy access. Then we need to have what we call an API [application programming interface] in the technology world — the plug-in for the retailer, so they have easy access to all of the folks that want to do the work. Now, to make this sustainable for both parties, we need it to be the correct pricing and the availability and the retained nature of these folks, so that it becomes repeatable, that we have the same folks doing the work, and that creates a nice outcome. But we also have to build something for the folks who are doing the work to help them, including banking, insurance, rewards for doing their work, and community support — even online mental health care.