Managing an army of temporary workers to staff a Taylor Swift concert, a UEFA Champions League soccer final at Wembley, or the Wimbledon tennis tournament can be a logistical nightmare.

Several thousand people – in catering, security, ticketing, merchandise sales, cleaning and more — must be in the right place at the right time.

The number of no-shows – temporary workers who sign up to work the day but don’t show up — can be as high as 15 percent for major events.

The workers are supplied by dozens of different agencies, allowing multiple opportunities for misunderstandings and miscommunications.

In the old days, there were stacks of paper files to keep track of it all. These gave way to spreadsheets, and then came along software solutions.

But there was nothing quite like Ubeya, says CEO Omri Dekalo, to manage huge workforces for a single event and to collate data from numerous employment agencies in one place.

Ubeya is an Israeli startup that has developed a sophisticated software solution to keep track of everyone and everything from recruitment to payment.

Behind the scenes

Fans enjoying a soccer match at Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam, or a Foo Fighters concert at London Stadium, will be blissfully unaware of Ubeya’s critical involvement behind the scenes.

But without it, says Dekalo, managers at a crowded venue can’t get a proper overall picture of what’s happening.

“Managing 4,000 workers — a typical number for a major event — is complicated even if they’re in one office,” he tells ISRAEL21c.

“But on a match day you don’t know them; they don’t owe you anything. It can be chaos.”

Ubeya’s platform also makes life easier for the temp workers, leading to greater engagement and loyalty.

Workers signed up with a staffing agency are notified of job opportunities on their smartphone and simply click to apply for a shift as a bartender, cashier, kitchen assistant or cleaner, for example. (The venue decides who gets the job.)

The software also enables workers to rate employers, see exactly what they’re earning, and communicate with employers and fellow employees on a dedicated app as if they’re using social media. 

“Think of Ubeya as a Slack [the workplace messaging app] for deskless workers,” says Dekalo.

The standard in the UK

Ubeya, founded in 2017 and based in Tel Aviv, has captured a large share of the market in the UK, where big venues rely heavily on outsourcing their workforces.

It has thousands of clients across 20 other countries including the US, Germany and The Netherlands. More than 250,000 casual workers use its app.

“Ubeya has become the standard for companies managing large events in the UK,” says Dekalo. 

“We work with the biggest stadiums in the UK: Wembley Stadium, the Emirates, Chelsea, Tottenham, West Ham, Twickenham, Goodwood Racecourse, Johan Cruyff Arena and the Aviva Stadium in Ireland.”

Slack for deskless workers

Before founding Ubeya, Dekalo was working at Palantir Technologies (software platforms for big data analytics) in New York, and cofounder/CTO Yuval Weinbaum was working at Google.

“We both understood that there was a lack of solutions for people out in the field; they didn’t have any way to communicate with their peers,” he says. 

The name “Ubeya” is inspired by the Japanese concept of the “Great Room,” a central space where people come together to solve problems and discuss urgent matters.

The startup’s first clients were catering companies in New York, followed by staffing agencies. Then they realized that their workforce management solution could tackle much bigger challenges.

“I told Yuval we need to focus on companies that have the biggest pain. That means the companies that have the most temporary workers. These workers are less loyal and you need to engage them more, with a better communication tool.”

And so they decided, two years into the Covid pandemic, to target sporting events and stadium concerts.

At that time, “There were no concerts, no football games, nothing,” says Dekalo. “Many companies ditched this niche of large events management area, but we doubled down on it.”

He says no other company has a solution that allows venues to order staff on a temporary basis from multiple vendors.

“The big thing we understood is that the staff on a matchday can come from multiple different companies,” says Dekalo.

“Before Ubeya, they were sending an Excel spreadsheet to Wembley telling them there were 500 security guards coming tomorrow and then sending an updated sheet because a few people changed and then updating it again and updating again.”

Expanding to more countries

Tanja Kasapovic, a staffing manager at Hospitality by Bernard, a staffing agency in California providing temp workers to golf and country clubs, VIP clients, and catering companies for big events, said that before Ubeya, the business relied on inefficient phone calls to communicate with workers.

“Ubeya allows for seamless communication between clients, employees, and the agency,” she said. “The platform’s messaging capabilities not only streamlined our communication but also saved us time, effort, and money, leading to increased productivity.”

By using Ubeya’s pay-as-you-go pricing model, which eliminates charges for inactive workers, Hospitality by Bernard saw a 50% reduction in workforce management software expenses. And Kasapovic said the platform’s automated features have freed up valuable staff time previously spent on manual tasks, further increasing efficiency and reducing expenses.

Ubeya, which now has 25 full-time employees and has raised $16 million to expand to more countries, recently signed deals with UK-based Compass Group, the largest contract foodservice company in the world, with 550,000 staff globally; and US-based Delaware North, with around 44,000 workers.

For more information on Ubeya, click here.