Meet Worksome – Freelance Platform Dedicated To Managing A Flexible Workforce Of Freelancers And Contractors

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Below is our interview with Morten Petersen, CEO at Worksome:

Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to your company?

A: Worksome is an end-to-end freelance platform dedicated to managing and paying a flexible workforce of freelancers and contractors. The company was founded in Copenhagen with the main aim to provide large businesses with a more efficient solution to manage and pay their external workers.

We now have more than 60,000 freelancers on the platform and provide a quick and reliable way to contract and pay highly skilled talent.

The platform allows companies to consolidate their entire global external workforce in one central platform, mapping their skills and capabilities, as well as allowing “one-click hiring” (shortening the time-to-hire from several weeks down to minutes), full worker classification, tax compliance and fast payments.

We built Worksome on the Scandinavian values of trust, autonomy and freedom, and the belief that the traditional model of employment was ripe for disruption. We now have a 50 person company with several global enterprises among our growing body of clients and are on a trajectory to hit $100 million in annualized bookings throughout this summer.

The platform is easy to use, accessible and bridges the gap between talent hungry companies and skilled freelancers looking for work.

Our biggest markets at the moment are the UK and the US, in addition to Copenhagen, and we have offices in London and New York and we are keen for further global expansion.

Q: Any highlights on your recent announcement?

A: Our recent $13 million USD in Series A funding allows us to focus on our global expansion with a big focus on the US, as well as existing European growth opportunities.

The funding was secured from Danish business angel, investor on Danish “Dragons Den” TV programme “Løvens Hule” and former Minister for Higher Education and Science, Tommy Ahlers, and family home manufacturer Lind & Risør, also allows us to further develop our product and build our wider global team.

Over the past year we have grown 10 times over while doubling our headcount since January 2020. Over the next 12 months, we hope to double our headcount again, focusing on growing our enterprise client base across the US, UK and Euro-Zone.

We are on track to hitting $100 million in annualised bookings throughout this summer, and so if our growth continues at the rate that we hope, we will be expanding our office spaces in our current geographies, as well as continually looking at new markets.

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Q: Can you give us more insights into your offering?

A: Worksome is a dedicated ecosystem for medium and large sized businesses, focusing on businesses who are working with approximately 20+ freelancers at a time. When companies hire dozens or hundreds of freelancers at one time, processes can get very complicated.

When it comes to compliance and payments, we take on a much greater responsibility than other freelancing platforms to make big hires easier. Worksome can handle not only individual freelancers, but also its clients’ entire preferred supplier list of 3rd party recruitment suppliers, thus organising the entire freelance workforce and supply chain on one single platform.

We can also handle both W2’s and 1099’s (in the US) as well as do IR35 determinations (UK) and tax deductions on behalf of its clients that manage their freelance workforces with Worksome.

We are also quickly gaining traction with large enterprise customers who have traditionally been using Managed Service Providers to manage and pay their external workforces. We mainly differentiate ourselves from other freelance platforms by combining services such as tax compliance, background and ID checks as well as payroll through our AI powered platform that matches talent to projects in seconds.

Our aim is to challenge the established industry brands including Randstad, Adecco and Manpower, with plans of scaling to becoming a global leader within 5 years.

The way we ensure that Worksome only attracts the best freelance talent is through our two-step vetting process. For step one, we use an inhouse-built robot to assess our freelancer applicants. It analyses their skillset, social media profiles, profile completeness and hourly or daily rate, as well as their CV and work history, to decide whether each person is a good fit for Worksome. For step two, our team of talent specialists manually review and decline or approve the freelancers that pass through step one with a score of 85% or more.

The investor for our recent funding round, Tommy Ahlers, is one of the most well-known business angels and former Minister for Higher Education and Science in Denmark, who features on the Danish Dragon’s Den equivalent – Løvens Hule. Ahlers also led Worksome’s 2018 investment round and it is great to see our relationship continue to grow from strength to strength.

Q: What can we expect from your company in the next 6 months? What are your plans?

A: We want to continue expanding our influence in the growing market of flexible working, already valued at $2 trillion USD, and are looking to challenge the established industry brands such as Randstad, Adecco and Manpower, in order to become a global leader within 5 years.

A hybrid of the traditional Vendor Management System, Freelance Management System and Talent pool platform, Worksome is thus challenging an established industry of brands including SAP Fieldglass and Beeline with plans of scaling to become a global leader within 5 years.

This is why we set up our New York Office, and is why we will continue to expand our office space as our teams in London and Copenhagen grow, in line with our ambitions to double our headcount over the next 12 months – hoping to get halfway through that goal in 6 months.

We are building a product of the future, with the aim of making a long-term difference in the hiring value chain to create a sustainable, flexible, and frictionless Future of Work.

When you ask business leaders, 90% believe that shifting their talent model to a blend of full-time and freelancers can give a future competitive advantage (Source: BCG). We see two major trends driving this sentiment; access to talent, and building an agile and flexible organization. This has become all the more true during the pandemic – a high degree of flexibility is allowing organisations to better navigate both the initial phase of the pandemic as well the current pick up of business activity.

With the amount of change that we’re currently seeing in the world, and with businesses constantly re-inventing themselves, the access to highly skilled and flexible talent is absolutely essential – now, in the next few months, years, and beyond.

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Q: What is the best thing about your company that people might not know about?

A: One thing about us, is we really prioritise our employee wellbeing and want to create office spaces that workers feel like they want to be in and not just a space that they are forced to be in.

To champion this, we recently announced that we hired the world’s first global ‘Head of Hygge’ in order to protect and improve the mental health of our team. As remote working has blurred the boundaries between work and home life, we are committed to preserving the wellness and mental health of our fast growing team.

Mental health has become a big issue during COVID for the millions of workers who have had to remote work for the past year. For people living in cramped house shares, living alone, or looking after children while simultaneously working, it has not been an easy experience and mental health problems have risen.

As businesses begin to return to the office, our commitment to making mental health and wellness a priority is paramount. The Head of Hygge will be responsible for creating positive mental health in the workplace for our team through monthly outdoor socials to help the team bond after working remotely for 12 months, spearheading in-office initiatives like sending flowers or scented candles to employees to improve wellness in their homes, as well as in the office.

Patricia Larsen is taking the role of ‘Head of Hygge’ and will be responsible for creating positive office cultures across Worksome’s global presence in London, New York and Copenhagen.

Already, Patricia has initiated wellbeing check-in calls across all members of Worksome’s staff in Copenhagen, London and New York to find out what would make their individual experience in the workplace, or at home, better. The objective for seemingly small acts of wellbeing is to help an easy transition back to the office, help workers’ brains recover from stress after 12 months of remote working, and cope better with feeling overloaded from calls, meetings and Zoom.