Press Release Published by: San Diego – Business Wire
Until now, large Fortune 1000 companies seeking to hire skilled on-demand or freelance workers had no compliant way to access gig economy talent. Today, Innovative Employee Solutions (IES), a nationwide provider of outsourced payroll and human resources (HR) administration services, launched a solution to that problem: Fulcrum, a first-of-its-kind hiring platform connecting enterprise companies with top online gig and freelance talent providers while maintaining full compliance.
According to a combined study by Intuit and Emergent Research, 34 percent of American workers earn money through the gig economy, in all manner of temporary, freelance or on-demand positions. That number is projected to grow to 43 percent by 2020, making the gig economy a far larger employer, by the numbers, than other more traditional, high-profile industries.
In 2016, IES President Peter Limone learned the online staffing business’s global market share was projected to grow to $10 billion by 2020. Realizing such platforms were the future of the staffing industry, he challenged his team to come up with a solution that would grow the ability of enterprise companies to hire from the online space. Over the next year and a half, IES’ top management, technical and operations minds formulated ideas that would become Fulcrum, and built its capacity to run as an independent company.
“I wanted to help bring the future of work to our clients,” said Limone. “It took a year and a half of brainstorming—but with each new idea, I realized this is the type of challenge my team at IES was made for. Fulcrum is what happens when the top minds of the staffing industry come together to create a simple, effective, fully-compliant way for Fortune 1000 employers to access the gig economy.”
Spearheaded by co-founders and former IES employees Trevor Foster and Sean Ring along with Tyson McDowell, Fulcrum delivers a powerful, end-to-end gig workforce hiring platform, where enterprise companies can access the entire gig economy from a single, fully-compliant online point of entry with transparent pricing models.
“For years, major enterprise companies have wanted to hire high-quality freelance workers from all around the globe, but had no cost-effective, compliant way to do so,” said Foster, CEO, Fulcrum. “Layers of existing processes and complex global compliance requirements made it very difficult for them to access this growing pool of talent. Fulcrum connects all the resources required for these employers to hire the talent they need quickly and effectively—with one single point of entry, one end-to-end integrated solution, and a single invoice.”
Based in San Diego, Fulcrum has developed an application programming interface (API) integrating the services of vendor management systems, compliance vendors, online talent marketplaces, background screening vendors, independent contractor service providers, freelancer management systems and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered recruitment platforms, providing a one-stop shop for hiring managers at enterprise companies. This API is fully integrated with IES’ back-office system, which ensures each freelance worker hired through Fulcrum is fully vetted, kept compliant and paid on time according to industry standards. IES will be Fulcrum’s lead U.S. compliance and payrolling vendor, and a key partner and investor as the business moves forward.
“We’re bringing on-demand access to freelance workers into the traditional staffing infrastructure of a Fortune 1000 contingent workforce program,” said Ring, chief revenue officer, Fulcrum. “We do this by normalizing data from multiple disparate platforms, creating a central hub for hiring managers to solve their greatest challenges. Fulcrum was created because we believe in democratizing access to talent for our clients and enabling all people worldwide to do meaningful work.”
“We are incredibly grateful for the major role IES has played in the development of Fulcrum,” continued Foster, “and we are particularly proud to have them behind us as the highest standard of compliance.”
About Fulcrum
Based in San Diego, Calif., Fulcrum provides a state-of-the-art talent acquisition platform that seamlessly brings the gig economy, where skilled freelancers take on short-term jobs on a project-by-project basis, to major enterprise companies who had no compliant way to access these workers before. Fulcrum solves that problem by bringing together leading gig economy talent marketplaces, compliance vendors, and advanced HR and staffing technology to build a hiring platform where enterprise companies can access freelance workers in a way that meets their global compliance standards. For more information, visit www.fulcrumworks.com.