More attractive labor platforms

Sangeet Paul Choudhary, in Singapore, is doing some excellent thinking and writing on platform. I can strongly recommend taking a look at his blog about Platform thinking.
In a recent article Choudhary looks at some of the elements of making labor platforms, like Uber and Taskrabbit, more attractive to work through.

Here's a slightly abbreviated quote:

"An increasing number of labor platforms, today, are employing contract laborers to power the supply side. They do not enjoy the benefits of full-time employment. To encourage them to participate on platforms on a sustainable basis, the platform owners need to move beyond acting like matching engines and understand the costs and benefits involved in producers participating on these platforms.

First, every platform player should lay out all costs and benefits involved in producers participating on the platform. These fall into three broad categories:

- Risk management: Platforms need to ensure that producers that are investing in the platform have capped costs of participation. This means that producers need to be insured against transaction risks.

- Learning and Improvement: Platforms need to ensure that producers constantly improve their ability to reap more benefits from the platform. This, in turn, involves community management measures that involve the sharing of best practices, an example being Airbnb’s community management programs with hosts.

- Well-being: Finally, platforms need to ensure that they guarantee well-being for producers in a manner similar to that in traditional organizations".