Recruitment and onboarding for deskless and hourly workers has always been a challenge, and one that startups have taken on in recent years. These employees are often always in demand due to traditionally high turnover rates, and yet, many still rely on paperwork and videos.

Desmond Lim, Workstream co-founder and CEO. Image Credits: Workstream

Workstream is one of the startups working on a solution for this problem, in its case, mobile-first hiring and onboarding tools. The company got a boost from investors to the tune of $60 million in Series B extension funding, led by GGV Capital. We’ve profiled Workstream twice in the past two years, when it raised $10 million in 2020 and then again in 2021 for its $48 million Series B.

“The past two years have really shown that there’s a huge gap in software built for this deskless, hourly worker,” Desmond Lim, co-founder and CEO of Workstream, told TechCrunch.” My parents are both hourly workers, and I used to run my own restaurant, so I grew up in that space and saw such a strong need for that.”

As mentioned, many startups are working on solutions to more easily hire deskless, hourly and remote workers. Much of this problem was brought out in the open largely due to COVID, and venture capital investors jumped in to support them.

Just this year, we saw investments into Remofirst, which is tackling international hiring; Connecteam, a company that brings together HR tools; Emi, which developed software to speed up the time it takes to fill dozens of frontline worker positions; Flip, a chat app designed especially for frontline workers; AskNicely, a frontline experience app; and SnapShift, a web solution for restaurant staff management. Add to that Blink, Shiftsmart, When I Work, Fountain and Seasoned, which also grabbed funding in the last year.

Lim explained that there are indeed many HR tools out there, but Workstream differentiates itself by designing its software to be a mobile-first tool built for deskless workers rather than employers.