No-shows are discovered at shift start, when the client is already feeling the failure.
For staffing and gig-staffing companies · 50 to 50,000 workers
Your margin is being spent on operations.
ShiftMargin is a founder-led studio. We measure what one filled shift costs you to serve, then automate the screening calls, no-show chasing, timesheet rework and client updates hiding inside that number. One workflow live in six weeks. Fixed fee.
Bring your fill-rate, no-show or recruiter-capacity numbers. Leave with the two workflows worth fixing first. No deck required.
Founder on every engagement
Fixed fees, paid on milestones
Your ATS and payroll stay
Live in 6 weeks, with a manual fallback
Who we work with
Built for operators who fill shifts at volume.
The work that drains margin is painfully ordinary. A missed call, a late worker, an unsigned timesheet, a WhatsApp order retyped wrong. None of it looks strategic. Together it sets your cost per filled shift.
Coordinator cost rises while intake and screening quality vary by office.
Recruiters are still dialling while a competitor’s qualified shortlist lands.
Fill rate has to hold while the ops team stays flat and regulators ask for records.
Equal-pay, classification and payroll checks are calculated repeatedly by hand.
What we build
Six systems. Each one retires a cost line.
Start with one. Keep your ATS and payroll. Humans stay on every decision that touches money, employment status or a client relationship. Open any system for the step-by-step: what goes in, what the automation does, what a person still decides, and what it costs to run.
01 · AI RecruiterCommon first build
Screen every applicant in minutes
Multilingual voice and WhatsApp screening runs your gates, records structured results and hands qualified candidates to a recruiter.
ReplacesRecruiters dialling lists and retyping notes into the ATS.
Target · time to hire−60%How it works →
02 · Sourcing Engine
Stop buying the same candidates twice
Re-engage the dormant worker database you already paid to acquire, alongside automated multi-channel sourcing and referrals.
ReplacesJob-board spend re-buying people already in your database.
Target · cost per lead−50%How it works →
03 · No-Show Shield
Act before the worker fails to arrive
Risk scoring, confirmations timed to when workers actually read, and a prepared backup pool protect the fill before the client sees the gap.
ReplacesThe 6am panic call and the client credit that follows it.
Target · no-show rate<4–6%How it works →
04 · Timesheet → PayrollCommon first build
Turn verified attendance into money
Attendance generates the timesheet, the payroll file and the client invoice. People review exceptions instead of retyping every record.
ReplacesTimesheet chasing, duplicate payments and unbilled hours.
Target · payroll leakage−90%How it works →
05 · Client Desk
Make a client message executable
Convert free-text orders into structured requirements with the rate card applied, then send fill updates without a coordinator typing them.
ReplacesWhatsApp-to-spreadsheet retyping and “any update?” emails.
Target · zero-touch orders70%+How it works →
06 · Worker Care
Support that already knows the shift
A multilingual agent answers with the worker’s shift, attendance and pay context, and escalates real cases with the history attached.
ReplacesThe memoryless call centre and the churn it causes.
Target · ops time−38%How it works →
Today
Lead list → repeated calls → voicemail → manual notes → ATS retyping → second verification call.
With ShiftMargin
Agent calls every lead → runs your gates → writes the result → transfers passes → recruiter closes.
Not sure which to fix first? That is what the audit is for →
How an engagement runs
Measure first. Automate second. Prove the saving every week.
No discovery decks. Every stage ends with something you can hold: a number, a ranked list, a workflow in production, a weekly report.
Decompose cost per filled shift into recruiter minutes, coordinator touches, chase cycles and leakage, from your logs, not a survey.
You get: your cost per filled shift, line by line.
Price every automation candidate by annual saving, failure mode and weeks to payback. Rank it. Show you the top two.
You get: a ranked list you can build with anyone.
Put one workflow into production behind a controlled manual fallback, wired into the ATS and payroll you already run.
You get: one workflow live, your team trained.
Report the old cost, the new cost and every exception, weekly, in your numbers. If the number stops moving, we stop building.
You get: the saving, visible in your P&L.
Fixed-fee engagements
Your numbers. Working software. No strategy theatre.
Every fee is fixed before work starts. Sprint balances fall due on milestones, when the workflow is processing your real records inside an agreed exception rate. Not when we say we are done.
Ops Audit
2 weeks · remote plus your ops floor
$7,500fixed
Start hereif you do not yet know which workflow is bleeding.
- Cost per filled shift, measured from your logs
- Funnel and workflow teardown
- Automation map with payback per item
- Yours to keep and build with anyone
- Fee credited against a sprint
2 founding seats
Automation Sprint
6 weeks · one workflow live
$25–40kscoped fixed
Start hereif you already know the workflow that hurts.
- One operational leak automated end to end
- Connected to your ATS or payroll
- Manual fallback and full audit trail
- Team trained, weekly savings view
- 50% on signature, balance on milestone
Fractional Automation Head
Quarterly · founder-led
$9kper month
Start hereif you want a roadmap, not a single build.
- Roadmap shipped workflow by workflow
- Your developers or our senior builders
- Monthly cost-to-serve report
- Cancel at quarter end
- Keep everything we built
The audit pays for itself or it is free. If it does not identify at least ten times its fee in annual savings, using your numbers, you do not pay.
Founding client program
Two seats at 40% off. In exchange for your name on the result.
The first two Automation Sprint clients get 40% off the scoped fee and the founder building it personally. We are not selling cheap consulting. We are buying our first two named case studies at a fair price, and saying so.
2 of 2 founding seats open
- You getOne leak automated end to end, live in your production environment inside six weeks, wired into your ATS and payroll, your team trained, and a weekly dashboard showing the saving in your numbers. At 40% off the scoped fee.
- We askA named case study with the before-and-after numbers we measure together, which you approve. And two introductions to peers with the same problem, once you have seen the results.
- Who qualifiesStaffing or gig-staffing operators with 1,000+ workers deployed or 500+ monthly shift fills, one named ops owner for a weekly 30-minute review, and API or export access to the systems the workflow touches.
- The auditStays at full price and keeps its guarantee. Its fee is credited against the sprint.
A note from the founder
Why a staffing founder should trust us near production.
I have spent the last decade running product for staffing and gig-work platforms across India, Southeast Asia and the Gulf. Hundreds of thousands of registered workers. Tens of thousands deployed every month. Payroll runs where a small mistake reaches a lot of people at once.
What I learned is that margin does not leak in the big decisions. It leaks in the confirmation call nobody made at 6am, the timesheet retyped three times, the client order that sat in a WhatsApp group until someone noticed. ShiftMargin exists to close exactly those leaks, one workflow at a time, measured before and after.
I lead every engagement myself with a small senior build team. Fees are fixed. Anything that touches money or employment status is approved by a human and logged. And if we cannot measure a workflow, we will tell you so and decline the work, because unprovable automation is where staffing technology budgets go to die.
Anuj SaxenaFounder, ShiftMargin · anuj@shiftmargin.com
500K+registered workers on a platform the founder ran product for
40,000frontline workers managed monthly across staffing operations
−90%payroll leakage on a 300,000-worker enterprise deployment
3d → 45mworker onboarding time after an agent-led rebuild
92%client requests filled within 24 hours on an operated platform
63 vs 19workers per internal FTE at an AI-led operator versus incumbents. Source ↗
These are founder and prior-platform operating outcomes, plus one published industry benchmark. They are not ShiftMargin client case studies. On a call we will tell you the context, what failed, and what we would not automate.
How we work
The commitments we would want if we were the ones buying.
Written into every statement of work, not just onto this page.
Deterministic rules, a named approver and an audit trail on every decision that affects whether a person works or gets paid.
Your clients and workers never feel our bugs. If the agent fails, the old process runs and we see it in the exception log.
We work inside your ATS, payroll and messaging stack. Never used to train public models. Self-hosted and region-specific deployment when you need it.
Scope is agreed before work starts. Everything we build is yours to keep, document and hand to anyone.
A workflow that cannot be measured cannot be proven. We would rather turn down the work than sell you an outcome we cannot show.
You talk to the person accountable for the result, backed by a small senior build team. No handoff to a junior bench.
Fair questions
What founders ask before they let automation near the business.
Our ATS is old and our data is messy.
That is normal, and it is not a reason to wait. We start with the system you have, even if it is WhatsApp and Excel, and isolate the smallest workflow that can produce a measurable return.
Why not just buy a point product for screening or no-shows?
Sometimes you should, and we will say so. Point products automate one step. We sell a lower cost per filled shift across the whole loop, integrate those tools where they genuinely fit, and bring the operator judgment on which step to automate first.
Who actually does the work?
Anuj leads every engagement personally, with a small senior build team. There is no discovery-by-partner, delivery-by-junior model here. You will know everyone who touches your systems.
Can AI make employment or payroll decisions?
Not unsupervised, and not in our design. Anything affecting money or employment status runs on deterministic rules with human approval and an audit trail. The agent gathers and verifies. People decide.
What happens if the number does not move?
The audit is free if it does not find ten times its fee in annual savings. Sprint balances are due on milestones defined by your real records and an agreed exception rate. If a workflow stops paying back, we stop building it.
Where does our data go?
It stays in your controlled systems wherever practical. We do not use it to train public models. Every engagement that touches worker data runs under a data processing agreement, and self-hosted or region-specific deployment is available.
Written from the ops floor
Reading for operators, not vendor decks.
Every number sourced, every miss included. All posts →
Blog · Timesheets and payroll
Ghost workers: your agency is paying people who do not exist
A worker leaves in March and nobody closes the assignment. Hours keep arriving and the wage keeps landing. Caught inside six months that costs a median $40,000. Left to run five years, over $1.1 million.
Blog · Screening and time to hire
AI in hiring: what staffing firms should automate in 2026, and what they shouldn’t
96% of US employers run a background check on every hire. Only 10% of staffing firms have AI embedded through their workflow. That gap looks like caution. It is confusion about where the line is.
Guide · Compliance
Regulation is rewriting what staffing operations must be able to prove
UK umbrella reform, the EU Platform Work Directive and Dutch Wet DBA enforcement, translated into the records your workflows must produce.
Read the guide →Find the first two workflows worth fixing.
A free 30-minute teardown with the founder. Bring the operation that creates the most friction every week. Leave with the two workflows worth fixing first, and what each would save.
What to sendYour companyYour roleThe workflow that hurts most each week
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