Digital Innovation
Portuguese, we hire them. There’s also
a cultural context to some of the work
we do with search engines and social
media. What someone in Indonesia
thinks is relevant is different to what
someone in Canada thinks is relevant.”
The specifics of the tasks vary,
according to the data required. “It could
be reading into their mobile phone to
collect their voice signal, or looking at
pictures that result from web searches
and deciding which looks best,”
Brayan explains. “It could be looking
at map searches and updating details
– checking and validating information
through the human’s eyes.
“A classic machine learning
application is a ‘recommender’,” he
continues. “Recommendations are
generally made up of past purchasing
data, but with some kind of human
oversight to identify the connection
between purchase one and two. The
commonality could be that somebody’s
watched all the movies of a certain actor,
for example. So it’s humans helping the
computer, by driving it along the way.
I read the other day that the Netflix
recommender retains about $1bn of
subscriptions a year.”
Attracting and recruiting crowd
members is a crucial component of
the business, an element with which
Alexander Mann Solutions is helping –
ensuring recruitment processes, based
in the Philippines, are “best-in-class
and highly scalable”.
“We’re creating jobs rather than killing them”
The attraction strategies required to
get the right number of people doing
work at the speed and scale Appen’s
customers require is challenging.
“We see tens of thousands of
resumes a month. We’re in the process
of implementing work that Alexander
Mann Solutions recommended around
marketing and social media to help us
with attraction.”
Benefits for workers
For crowd members around the world,
Appen offers work they may not
otherwise be able to find. “A lot of our
crowd workers are at-home parents
and we also have college students and
retirees,” says Brayan. “From feedback,
I know one lady is agoraphobic.”
THOUGHTS ON THE GIG ECONOMY
The gig economy is just a part of the workforce, but there’s a wrestling period going on, hence
the lawsuits we hear about. Employees want flexibility and security; employers want loyalty but
the ability to scale up and down. For the gig economy to flourish, the law needs to catch up, so
employees and employers must find mutual ground and agree how each wants to be treated.
Appen has two distinct cohorts of workers, both of which I need to engage. Ultimately, it
comes down to the way you treat people. We recently had to take hundreds of people off a
project that ended and try to find them other work. We were open with the crowd and managed
to move 90% to other projects. If you fail to communicate and treat people poorly, you risk
(vocal) negativity. As gig workers are not employed, you can’t engage them in the ways you
engage your permanent workforce. At Appen, we respect them as we respect our customers.
Mark Brayan will be speaking at Catalyst 2017 in Singapore in November on the
subject of the gig economy.
alexandermannsolutions.com
52
Permanent workers are attracted
by the company’s “high-growth and
engaging environment”. Although the
pool of linguists is small, Appen offers
the rare opportunity of a commercial,
rather than academic career.
“As a relatively small company we’re
competing with bigger brand names
for tech talent,” Brayan acknowledges.
“Our advantage is that we’re culturally
different and genuinely global; in
our Sydney office, we have 30-plus
languages spoken on any given day,
and the infrastructure and culture of
working across borders and time zones.
“We’re also a profitable, growing
business,” he adds. “Our 2017 first half
results show our revenue grew by 39%
and net profits by 50%. That can be
appealing to people who might have
been burned by racier start ups.”
Future proofing
Appen currently has fewer than 10
competitors, but Brayan is aware
that his is a rapidly growing industry.
“We’ll need to provide more data more
quickly, at lower cost than competitors,”
he predicts.
While repeating his belief that AI
must be embraced in the world of work,
he insists that caution is required.
“Embracing tech is the first part, but
we need to be respectful of it, because,
as with medical technology, AI can
cause harm. But my general view is that
it will enhance work; I don’t think we’ll
all be couch potatoes tomorrow.”