I started Zing because dealing with part-time work sucks. For everybody. Employees are stressed out with finding shifts, good employers, good pay. Employers weather no-shows, expensive staffing agencies, scheduling nightmares.
Zing is an app that addresses this pain.
Part-time management pain
If you’re a part-time server, dishwasher, runner, line cook, you know the hassle and uncertainty of filling enough shifts to cover the costs of life. Since any given employer might not have enough, you’re always applying to new places. Sometimes, life runs week to week.
On the flip side, as an employer, you may or may not have a big enough roster to cover your busy times. Sure, there are staffing agencies out there but they cost an arm and a leg and there’s no guarantee of quality, or even attendance! Even if you’re staffed up, the chaos of juggling the schedule on a weekly basis can eat up more time than it feels like it’s worth.
I’ve worked in the hospitality business for over 20 years, and this has always been at the top of the stress list for managers and employees alike. If you don’t have part-time work constantly mastered, it hurts morale, it hurts profits, it hurts your health and reputation. I’ve personally been in the situation where I’ve had to call friends and family to cover last minute shifts when my agency let me down. I’ve washed the dishes myself!
So, what’s the solution?
I doubt there’s a magic bullet, but there’s certainly an opportunity with technology and the ease of which we can all share and coordinate information. This ability did not exist 20, even 10 years ago, not at the scale we have today.
Zing’s mission is to run some crazy (or not so crazy) experiments, using an app.
Such as: What if we got some local hospitality businesses to agree to share their part-time rosters? Zing would use an intelligent scheduling tool to manage this “pool” of part-timers. Meanwhile, we would add new part-timers to the pool as time goes on.
Businesses have access to more staff, and the part-timers have access to more businesses through the app. Shift swapping, cancelling, booking—it all happens as if the employers and people are part of one big chain. In effect, they are: it’s Zing.
And it costs way less than an agency.
Serkan Kutlu
Co-founder & CEO, Zing
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