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Problem: Demand for employees at any given corporation fluctuates month-by-month.

Solution: A platform that allows large corporations to “share employees” for a flat-rate; in essence bringing the “sharing economy” to the corporate world. Given the effect of COVID19, over 40 million Americans have filed for unemployment. Moreover, businesses are now taking new precautions to protect customers — Uber is suspending drivers by the thousands if any of their passengers have been diagnosed with COVID19. While the last financial collapse in 2007/08 led to the sharing economy, I doubt that consumers in the near future will want to share anything especially if it involves travel or potentially being exposed to COVID19 (in fact, AirBnb hosts are selling properties and AirBnb laid of 25% of its staff due to a lack in travel demand). However, in China we saw and are seeing a new model within the sharing economy: Corporate Employee Sharing.

During the pandemic, Alibaba’s grocery branch Fresh Hippo borrowed employees from other restaurant brands that were forced to shut down during quarantine to help with deliveries and man stores. As reported by Reuters,

Freshippo had to obtain special permits to enter and exit Hubei and find volunteers from within its staff to drive trucks into the disease-stricken province, as they faced a mandatory 14-day quarantine after coming back out, Hou said.

To cope with low staff numbers in stores, the company hired thousands of people from restaurants and shops, employing those thrown out of work because of government-mandated shutdowns of small business.

“We simplified our procedures to make everything easier to understand,” Hou said about in-store training. “Usually after two hours of instruction, they could hit the ground running.”

This idea of rapid training and sharing employees from business that may be going through tough times. After the crisis, these waiters and chefs will go back to their original work and, in the meantime, the restaurant won’t need to worry about paying its staff. The model is a COVInnovation and has been reported on a bit in Quartz and Chinese media like Xinhua Net.

Monetization: Percentage of salaries paid to borrowed employees.

Contributed by: Michael Bervell (Billion Dollar Startup Ideas)

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