Workers were previously paid weekly for the week they had just worked.

The payment issues came to light in a recent email sent to Recruiter. A part-time worker on the platform complained of not being paid properly. Within the email was an attachment with a message from Syft founder and CEO Jack Beaman in which he acknowledged the following issues:

• Clients not returning timesheets promptly, while on occasion Syft has been unable to pay certain clients’ shifts on time due to not having the required information.
• Clients shortening worker hours or adding breaks that weren’t taken, resulting in messages contesting pay/hours.
• Discrepancies between what is shown in-app versus payslip hours.
• Workers being unable to get P60s and P45s without contacting Syft’s support team.

When contacted by Recruiter, Beaman revealed these issues first arose in May, as the summer event season began in earnest and Syft started supplying larger numbers of worker to clients. The sheer volume of temporary workers resulted in clients being unable to process timesheets to meet Syft’s weekly deadline. This stemmed from some clients using an alternative timesheet processing system to Syft’s system.

Beaman added that while the problems have been limited to a few clients, Syft is currently querying around 100 shifts with clients.

These issues, Beaman explained, have led to Syft deciding that from September onwards the platform will move to pay workers a week in arrears to give clients more time to approve timesheets and workers to contest any issues they have with the hours provided.

According to Beaman, in some cases, Syft has paid the hours to the workers without client confirmation, when pay queries have lasted to the extent that clients are unable to confirm their attendance or hours.

“We are more than confident that by giving clients and workers that extra week to reconcile their differences we can avoid this issue happening again,” Beaman told Recruiter. 

“As well as reviewing which clients we work with, situations like this will not arise again. In terms of lessons learnt it has been a tough one and as a company we have taken onboard feedback from workers and clients, and have made the necessary changes and will also be reviewing clients we work with who have proven to be the major cause of these problems.”

Syft won the 2018 Recruiter Award for Technology Innovation Of The Year in May.

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