Syrg — Future Employee Relationship Management (FERM) Solution
By: Bram Berkowitz
Tags: Gig Economy, Startup, Restaurant, Venture Capital

Syrg — Future Employee Relationship Management (FERM) Solution

Allowing F500 corporations and franchisees to quickly hire new hourly workers from untapped applicant pools and reduced turnover

The Problem

Hourly workplaces have notoriously high turnover rates, which for quick service restaurants is around 132% per year, according to Quick Service Magazine. Hourly employers are therefore constantly hiring new people and spending thousands of dollars to train them, only to see their employees leave a few weeks or months later. This has been a problem for decades, but fear of infection by COVID-19 and high unemployment benefits has only made things harder, even as unemployment rates rise.

What The Company Does

Syrg helps hourly employers get ahead of their hiring needs and stabilize their workforces. They do that by creating engaged, personalized, and growing talent communities for each customer, getting customers great hires today and a place to easily source from in the future. Talent communities consist of customers’ best former, seasonal, and student employees, as well as past applicants and referrals, and receive regular updates ranging from open opportunities to exit and insight surveys. The results are simple: customers no longer need to scramble for hires every time someone leaves and instead can focus on growing their business for the long-haul.

The Market

Today, Syrg focuses mostly on helping franchise operators, which represent a $960M opportunity in the U.S. alone. Syrg is the only software company that proactively cultivates relationships with potential future hourly employees, and as a result, has never gone head to head with another software vendor. Syrg’s prospects evaluate Syrg against hiring recruiters and using temp agencies, against which Syrg has countless points of differentiation. In addition to being significantly cheaper than either option, Syrg cultivates relationships with and generates candidates from tens of thousands of potential future employees simultaneously. This means that Syrg is able to produce a more consistent flow of higher qualified candidates at a fraction of the cost of any alternative.

Business Model

Syrg is a software-as-a-service business that charges an annual subscription fee. The fee is determined by the number of employees a customer has at each one of their locations and how many total locations they have. If you’re interested in a specific quote, please reach out to sales@syrg.app to set up a brief intro call.

Traction

Syrg publicly launched Future Employee Relationship Management in June 2020 and has since signed almost 15 new customers in just 4 months. Over the same period, Syrg participated in OneValley’s (fka GSVlabs) Pioneer Pitch Night: Black Founders Edition, where it won first place. Syrg is also a certified technology partner of Ultimate Kronos Group.

Founding Team Background

CEO Rahkeem Morris and COO Rob Snyder met at Harvard Business School in 2017. Before getting his MBA and working at Google, Rahkeem was a high school dropout working two to three hourly jobs at a time. As Rahkeem bounced from job to job, he realized his employers were always short-staffed and scrambling for hires. Rahkeem knew he’d be willing to work for any of his previous employers under the right circumstances and found it strange they never reached out to him proactively. Syrg’s FERM is the first step in Rahkeem’s vision for transforming hourly work and recruiting. Before business school and meeting Rahkeem, Rob was a McKinsey consultant focused on frontline operational transformations and turnarounds. He became interested in the gig economy and the future of work after experiencing it firsthand as a consultant with Boston-based Catalant (fka Hourly Nerd).

What They Need Help With

If you’re involved in an hourly workplace that struggles with hiring — particularly if you’re a quick service restaurant franchisee — Syrg would love the opportunity to understand your business and explore if they can get you similar results to their rapidly growing customer base. Syrg is also always interested in hearing from hardworking, talented individuals passionate about helping hourly workers and their employers. Syrg loves working with great people and is open to interviewing across all levels and functions, with a particular interest in hardcore engineers considering manager roles and customer success professionals. The company is also always looking to partner with great investors passionate about its vision. Connect With The Syrg Team.

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