Addressing 'bad jobs' in the construction industry

I’m a sparky and the founder of earwig - the UK’s first reviews website where construction workers find the best jobs by building a community and sharing knowledge.

The last job I was on, the recruiter didn’t tell me I needed a special drill. When I arrived, the supervisor on site was furious because I was the fourth bloke who’d turned up drill-less, use-less or both. I didn’t actually own this special drill but I needed that job so I told them I did and that night, I went out and bought one.

But when I turned up the next day, I found out I’d been fired and neither the supervisor nor the recruiter had even bothered to tell me. I was now suddenly out of work, 350 quid down with no idea where the next job was coming from. This is a typical story for tradespeople on temp contracts (and a fairly mild one at that).

At earwig, the problem we’re addressing is bad jobs. At the moment it’s far too easy for workers to choose bad jobs because: there are thousands of recruiters all in fierce competition who’ll tell you anything to get you on site; thousands of payroll companies squeezing you with ever higher margins; and choosing safe worksites and decent employers is also like playing Russian roulette. There’s no transparency and workers have little power to affect change.

In practice, earwig works a bit like a Tripadvisor. Workers can anonymously share their stories and not only does this feedback give other workers everything they need to make informed choices, it also shows recruiters, contractors, developers, investors, government and anyone else who’s interested how to create environments where workers can thrive.

Along side the tech platform, earwig is working hard to become a trusted guide for workers (think Martin Lewis for tradespeople). We’ll be helping to answer their most urgent questions and trying to demystify some of the confusion surrounding legislation like AWR and IR35, for example. We believe that communication is salvation and that many of the problems facing workers could be solved or avoided altogether if people were more informed. Our guidance work can be found on our blog.

So far, the biggest success we’ve had has been developing the platform through many hours (55 hours and counting) of user-testing with workers, each of whom has helped to shape the platform from its humble beginnings to the website that it is today.

We’re also fortunate that such a large company as Skanska has recognised the value of earwig and agreed to a paid pilot. We see this as an example of a forward-thinking contractor demonstrating their desire to be at the cutting edge of employee relations, which means a lot to the workers on their sites.

We are currently negotiating a second pilot with another contractor and we are seeking a third and final pilot to bolster our learning and enable us to build a well-rounded, inclusive tool that everyone can use. Pilots are valuable for contractors because it’s about being involved early in what earwig captures, how it captures it and how it’s ultimately used.

We’ll be opening our next funding round in Q2 to add new talent to the team and new features to the platform so 2020 is going to be a pivotal year.

Our mission is to give all workers the information and tools they need to fulfil their potential. If anybody reading this gets excited by our mission, get in touch, we’d love to speak to you.