Author: Martijn Arets (Website - LinkedIn - Twitter)
Floor van Haaren
"There is a lot of talent available worldwide, it's just that we often lack the vision to look across national borders to engage talent and solve the labour shortage," says Floor van Haaren, co-founder of online marketplace Cocoroco. That is exactly what he is helping employers with via the platform. International companies looking for customer service professionals get in touch with candidates from all over the world with the right skills and language ability via Cocoroco. Once they have found a qualified professional, they start working for the organisation remotely from home.
It is a typical example of how remote working is changing the labour market. What opportunities and threats does it present when workers can basically work for organisations from around the world? In this episode of The Gig Work Podcast from the WageIndicator Foundation, I talk to Van Haaren to learn more about his unique platform and developments in the global labour market.
The story can be listened to as an episode of the Gig Work Podcast.
Focused on customer service and long-term relationships
Cocoroco is different from other remote work platforms in many ways. First, many platforms are blamed for unfairly letting people work as freelancers. This is not the case with Cocoroco. In fact, almost 80% of workers are employed via the platform. Those who want to work as freelancers must consciously choose to do so. This way, Cocoroco not only abides by the law, it is also easy for customers.
Furthermore, many marketplaces of this kind originate from the world of recruitment and selection, but not so with Cocoroco. The platform was founded in 2021 by Dutch call centre and outsourcing company 5CA. So Van Haaren and his team know what is important in remote customer service. They do their best to make sure candidates are a really good fit for vacancies. "We basically want to ensure long-term relationships between employer and employee," says the co-founder. "Given our business model, we have a common interest here together with the client, candidate and ourselves. When someone works longer for a client, everyone is happy."
Cocoroco's database now includes some 7,000 screened candidates from 60 countries.
Cultural differences
This is why Cocoroco invests in researching local habits. "Making a good match is our goal, but it is not easy," he says. "It depends on the wishes of the company and the employee, cultural differences and the organisational culture. For example, cultural differences are more influential in a small company with only Dutch employees than in a large, international organisation."
Currently, Dutch companies such as Rituals, Picnic and Autoscout24 in particular use the platform. In the scarce labour market, they struggle to find enough suitable employees. Via Cocoroco, they have a choice of candidates from all over the world. Most candidates now come from southern Europe and South Africa, says Van Haaren. "This has mainly practical reasons, namely fewer time and cultural differences. They are often Dutch or German who live abroad and want to work for international companies in the same time zone. But we also work a lot with local people and with people from Asia and Latin America for e.g. evening and night shifts at Dutch times. If a customer has more options, he can be more selective and the chances of a good match are higher."
Fair payment
Van Haaren believes it is important that everyone working via Cocoroco gets a fair wage. Employees have an employment contract with conditions appropriate to the country they live in, e.g. a market-based salary. Candidate and client negotiate the conditions among themselves, Cocoroco provides a guideline and ensures it complies with local legislation. Van Haaren: "The salary has to be fair, so we calibrate salaries in the local market and support the employer in this. That still means that an employer pays less for someone in Portugal, than someone in the Netherlands."
He stresses that everyone earns more than the minimum wage in their country anyway. "In fact, all candidates speak their mother language and always English, 80% have experience in customer service work and 65% of candidates are higher educated ", he says. "We want to give them the opportunity to connect and gain experience in international companies and earn more than if they take a side job in the local market. Being the cheapest is not our goal. We go for the right match for a long-term relationship and the client and candidate determine the tariff."
Advancing and upskilling
He finds that Cocoroco is often a stepping stone to the labour market, for example for recent graduates struggling to find a job in their country of residence. "Often, people start with us on a six-month contract and in 90% of cases this is extended," he says. "If they want to, we help clients hire people on a permanent basis. I also see highly educated people progressing via customer service into roles that match their studies, for example IT or marketing."
In the future, Van Haaren plans to offer in-service training via the platform. "I think this is a big advantage for candidates and clients," he says. "If we help people grow into other roles, it makes working via Cocoroco even more interesting. In our data, we can see what skills the worker lacks to grow from assignment A to assignment B. We can then offer training for that. This keeps candidates in tune with customers' needs."
Technological developments will significantly change customer service specifically and the labour market in general, Van Haaren expects. "Nobody can predict what the market will look like in 10 years," he says. "If you work online, you already have human competition from all over the world. And increasingly, you are also competing with technology. So upskilling is very important to keep up with the rapidly changing labour market. And responding to changing demand for skills in the labour market is exactly where our strength lies."
Analysis
Cocoroco is not a standard gig platform where the worker goes from short gig to gig. Van Haaren and his team do not go for short and one-off deals, but long-term relationships with candidates. Unlike competitors, they do not have to invent tricks to bind workers by having a suitable offer for everyone and offering a strong proposition on both sides of the marketplace.
Van Haaren has an interesting take on the future of the online labour market and the value his platform can add. I share his conviction that the market will look completely different in less than a decade. I also like how Van Haaren and his colleagues think about the value they add for both clients and candidates. Of course, there is always a tension between Cocoroco's wishes and those of the client. That the platform also regularly rejects clients is strong.
Focusing on long-term relationships with clients and candidates seems very sensible. First, because it will become even more important in the future to identify missing skills of workers and help them develop. Indeed, artificial intelligence can answer many simple questions in the near future and so the work of a customer service professionals is changing. This will revolve more around things like data analysis, personalised advice and dealing with new tools.
Second, it helps Cocoroco move flexibly with customer needs. Indeed, the role of the platform vis-à-vis companies is also changing. The platform will provide even more support for hiring employees, for instance with data analysis and tools. If Cocoroco does this for many customers, it will offer economies of scale. In short, the strategy seems a wise choice for the unpredictable future of the global labour market.