Courtesy Rahkeem Morris

Rahkeem Morris (MBA 2018) spent the first 10 years of his work life as an hourly wage earner, moving from one minimum wage job to the next, often without transferable skills or training. The cycle wasn’t good for businesses or for hourly workers, Morris realized: Companies lost money on training, and employees often started right back at minimum wage with each new job.

This insight is at the heart of HourWork (formerly Syrg), which Morris founded in 2018 to bring together employers and their former employees so that both can benefit. The company uses a web-based application to connect employers and former workers in good standing, and allow employers to automate and manage their interactions with former employees. HourWork’s model—pooling and then nurturing former talent for future permanent and temporary “on-demand” positions—has helped businesses save more than $1,000 per permanent hire by bypassing recruitment, background checks, and training. It has also helped hourly employees pick up extra work.

“You can imagine that if you’re a store manager, you want somebody who’s familiar with your systems and your culture,” notes Morris. “And we’re trying to get people who have had that training, to be able to use it to earn additional income.” HourWork also specializes in improving retention rates, surveying employees who leave a company and using that data to help businesses address issues that contribute to turnover. The company also has recently started applying relationship management to former applicants and current employees.

“Work is an experience in which virtually everyone partakes to support themselves and their families, yet ‘work’ is so fundamentally broken for millions, especially hourly workers,” observes Morris. “HourWork is all about giving back to the people who gave me a chance, making possibility scalable while breaking the cycle that leads to poor outcomes for everyone involved.”

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