ShiftPixy Creates Innovative Solution To Employer/Employee Problems Created By Affordable Care Act (ACA)

IRVINE, California, June 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The ShiftPixy Solution Allows Employers Who Choose To Reduce Employee Work Hours As Their Default Option To Avoid Mandated Regulatory Costs And Related Burdens; Gives Them The Ability To Maintain Workforce Levels While Providing Employees Opportunity To Receive "Full Time" Wages And Healthcare Coverage.

ShiftPixy Management explains why they believe that the Company has the potential to significantly increase revenues in the future.

ShiftPixy Has Filed A Regulation A+ Offering Circular with the SEC; Will Use A New SEC Regulatory Framework That Allows Non-Accredited Investors The Opportunity To Invest in SEC Registered A+ IPO Offerings. 

ShiftPixy, Inc. ("ShiftPixy® or the "Company") a disruptive Next Gen GIG Economy provider of unique insurance products, regulatory compliance services, proprietary human administration tools and variable labor force provider, announced the initial roll-out of its business model in Southern California.  Building upon this success, the Company plans to release a new application in early September 2016, that will enable unemployed, under-employed or part-time and/or full-time individuals in the nation's restaurant and hospitality industry workforce, and ultimately in all business' workforce, to apply for variable shift work from businesses in their local market. Appropriately, this proprietary app is planned for release on Labor Day 2016.

The Company saw that the Affordable Care Act (ACA), while solving problems also inadvertently opened up a whole new market for labor services… and the Company also saw that the shortcomings in the much hyped new class of the service industry, the "GIG Economy," was not the way to tap into this vast new market.

The GIG Economy is a service industry where workers are expected to operate like mini-businesses. The influence of these kinds of service industry companies is growing. According to an analysis by Greylock Partners, the value of transactions over platforms such as car services Lyft and Uber, grocery delivery service Instacart and courier service Postmates could grow as large as $10 billion this year."

Scott W. Absher, ShiftPixy Founder & CEO said: "As technology has advanced over the past decade, new internet-based employment platforms emerged which are often referred to collectively as the 'Gig Economy'." Many of these platforms, such as Uber (transportation) and Instacart (grocery delivery) regularly engage 'contract workers' rather than 'employees' for jobs (gigs). Among other reasons, this classification allows companies like Uber to operate with 20% to 30% less in labor costs than the competition,leading to eye-popping numbers like Uber's $40 billion valuation or Instacart's latest $220 million round of funding. Many fear the loss of the gig workforce structure, either by a wave of class-action lawsuits, intervention by regulators, or through the collective action of disgruntled workers, and the gig economy may be in serious jeopardy.

(http://www.fastcompany.com/3042248/the-gig-economy-wont-last-because-its-being-sued-to-death)

ShiftPixy's evolution of the classic GIG model, totally eliminates this key weakness in the standard model of treating workers as independent contractors.

ShiftPixy has embraced the next Gen structure for the GIG economy by making their workers (ShiftPixy calls them "Shifters") employees of ShiftPixy and lending them out to third party employers in need of additional workers.

The employers get the benefit of having a workforce without the compliance and regulatory burdens that normally accompany their hiring of a regular workforce, particularly ones that exist in industries with many part-time/shift workers such as the restaurant and hospitality industries, ShiftPixy's initial target market. ShiftPixy and NOT the operating business is the entity that employs these Shifters and handles ACA and other administrative and regulatory compliance matters that accompany the hiring of employees. ShiftPixy totally removes that burden from its operating business clients.

The need for the services the Company offers is an unintended result of and has been amplified by the compliance burdens placed upon employers of GIG Economy workers under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). ShiftPixy recognized this need early on and saw it as an opportunity.

As shown by the studies below, the ACA's new compulsory insurance requirements for US business owners has caused companies to reduce the number of hours worked by employees as their default solution.  However, that left them with a need for additional workers to fill the void.

As a result, employers require a greater number of employees who are each working fewer hours than before… and shift workers now need more opportunities to work for different companies in order to maintain their income level.

Absher added: "The Affordable Care Act is affecting personnel decisions. A survey of more than 600 small business owners by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 20% of companies surveyed reported they have cut the number of workers they employ. Employers are not required to offer coverage for employees who work less than 30 hours per week. A related study found that 12% of employers nationwide plan to reduce workers' hours as a result of ACA^[1]."

1 http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st356

One direct casualty of ACA has been the shift worker, with full time employment with one employer becoming a thing of the past as employers dropped hours and shifts to bring their business into ACA compliance by having less than 50 full time employees.  Full time employees not only include traditional full time workers working more than 30 hours per week but also requires employers to make complex calculations involving all part time workers to make sure they don't have part time workers constituting equivalent full time employees.

"There are approximately 26 million part time workers in the United State," said Absher.. "Of these, more than 6 million people are classified as 'involuntary part-time workers', meaning that they would have preferred full-time employment, but were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job^[2].

2 http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_08072015.pdf

On the other side of the table, due to ACA, in order not to be subject to ACA insurance mandates job providers now had to have more people working fewer hours. The Company has seen that race to meet the new demands and covering new gaps are stressing small business as never before in the US. The new demands have made delivery and cash flows challenging for small employers who provide most of the US employment.

Scott W. Absher, Co-Founder & CEO added: "We have seen that the race to meet the new demands and covering new regulatory requirement gaps are stressing small business as never before. The new demands have made compliance, staffing, and cash flows more challenging for small employers who provide most of the US employment. To address these widespread pain points, ShiftPixy has established a unique and what we believe are a highly desirable suite of services that merge insurance coverage access, operational, compliance and financial support, along with intermediation of shift workers and available shifts at participating businesses."

One valuable aspect of ShiftPixy's services to employers is access to a large pool of qualified shift workers that are part of the Company's proprietary ecosystem. Many of these shifters will come into the ecosystem through their current employers who become ShiftPixy clients thus making ShiftPixy the employer of record for their workers. The Company intends to add to the ShiftPixy ecosystem others seeking employment (but not working for ShiftPixy employers) from Company marketing initiatives focused on continuously expanding the pool of available shift workers, initially from the new mobile app the Company will offer in September 2016. These activities will give employers a greater incentive to become ShiftPixy clients by making available to them a greater number of qualified, local shift workers to fill available shifts through marketing to potential shifters outside the ecosystem will occur simultaneously with onboarding additional shifters via new employer enrollment with ShiftPixy.

ShiftPixy will initially target the restaurant and hotel industries, a market comprised of 13 million workers. Management has also identified several additional markets such as New York, Chicago, Dallas and Orlando where ShiftPixy may in the future target for marketing through what it will promote as bringing the same high value type services to these industries as it is now bringing to the restaurant and hospitality industries.

ShiftPixy is already generating significant revenue, and has the realistic potential to achieve what few startups can in a short period of time - generate significant annual revenues.

Asher added: "Management has leveraged its expertise and long standing market alliances within the property and casualty producer community to assemble a large backlog of potential Provider Clients for what we believe to be the Company's unique platform and programs. ShiftPixy now is in the position of being able to select rather than inviting Provider Clients into its proprietary program which we believe will enable ShiftPixy to grow more rapidly and select clients that may add more profitably to our operations."

Absher added: "We call a prospective employee a 'Shifter'. We have designed our ShiftPixy mobile app to be the primary entrance into the ShiftPixy ecosystem for a Shifter who was not an employee of an company that became a ShiftPixy client. The user experience on this app is being designed to provide a simple mobile access and opportunity management tool for Shifters to select and manage their shift opportunities. ShiftPixy intends to collect nominal monthly user fees from Shifter participation in the ShiftPixy ecosystem via this app. The ShiftPixy app will also serve as a gateway for Shifters to access perks and benefits an employee of a large company would enjoy. These perks may include health dental and vision coverages, 401(k) or IRA access, and a variety of discounts."

Media expenditures are planned to support the launch of the mobile Shifter access application. Additionally, the Company's electronic marketing plan focuses on generating message buzz around the ACA enforcement actions we expect in 2016 will show up in the form of penalties in 2016 for the unprepared employers of 2015. These penalties are steep, potentially in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or more and we expect will gain a great deal of national attention. When this happens, the Company intends to produce a significant volume of publicity around the ShiftPixy compliance solution within the trade and financial media to attempt to attract additional clients.

ShiftPixy's planned B2B digital message program will track hot subject matter surrounding ACA enforcement and compliance and produce additional content we will use to elevate ShiftPixy as an innovative employer solution to these ACA problems

The Company also reported that it has filed with the SEC an Offering Circular on Form 1-A under new Regulation A+. This new SEC regulation allows not only just wealthy accredited or institutional investors but also non-accredited investors… everyday people… the opportunity to invest in A+ IPO's.  For more information go to: https://wrhambrecht.com/ipos/shiftpixy-inc-regulation-a-ipo/

About ShiftPixy, Inc.  

ShiftPixy was formed to take advantage of weaknesses in compulsory insurance markets and new compliance requirements for U.S. businesses where statutory requirements for business owners collide with extremely limited access to the required insurance coverage, particularly health care insurance coverage, and related regulatory compliance issues. ShiftPixy management has leveraged over 20 years of experience in developing and marketing alternative risk programs to address unique business insurance needs into the delivery of a unique and what we believe to be a highly desirable suite of services to merge coverage access with operational compliance and financial support.

ShiftPixy's management team discovered that recent new demands due to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) were forcing a new compliance layer into the marketplace for our existing and potential Provider Clients which we were forced to aid in addressing for them. Due to the compliance and risk areas of expertise that were core to our client delivery, mastery of an effective solution such as the one we have developed has become essential.

In the work to master and incorporate a means to effectively address the new ACA compliance

demands as part of our core service platform we observed that shift work was now very vulnerable. The direct casualty of ACA was the shift worker who is now seeing full time employment with one employer becoming a thing of the past as small employers dropped hours and shifts to bring their business into ACA compliance. The shift worker has now become part of the under-employed and forgotten millions in the US economy.

One the other side of the ACA impact were the job providers who now had to have more people

working fewer hours. The race to meet the new demands and covering new gaps are stressing small business as never before in the US. The new demands have made delivery and cash flows challenging for small employers who provide most of the US employment. 

ShiftPixy management realized that they were in the prefect position to intermediate a better

solution to meet the needs on both the provider and shift worker sides of the new Next Gen labor reality in the US. ShiftPixy has developed proprietary technology and client engagement processes that enable the Company create high value on both the employer and the employee sides of the U.S. shift work chasm.

When launched in September, the ShiftPixy mobile app allows available and qualified shift workers to connect with immediately available shifts from participating ShiftPixy Provider Clients through a simple mobile application. Shift workers or "Shifters" can find shift opportunities within their skill set and geographic range and pick up available shifts when they need the work. ShiftPixy processes the entire workflow on the provider side from offering open shifts, approving a Shifter based on their rich profile, to processing all of the payroll, insurance and regulatory demands for each shift hour worked.

The ShiftPixy provider platform secures and monetizes long-term Provider Client relationships under annual agreements which are not passive or transactional but active and vital to our client's success. Our product suite is designed to meet critical operational and financial needs and are specifically focused to exploit what we see as the current market weakness, with our goal of placing our value proposition very high with the Provider Clients we target. The ShiftPixy Shifter platform secures and monetizes individuals seeking shift work based on need and availability matched to their specific skills and within their geographic range on a monthly fee basis for access.

ShiftPixy management has leveraged not only its expertise but also its long-standing market alliances within the property and casualty producer community to assemble a very large backlog of Provider Clients anxious for the planned launch of our unique platform and programs. The Company has the unique position of allowing rather than inviting Provider Clients into its proprietary program which allows ShiftPixy to grow rapidly and select Provider Clients profitably.

Our goal for our small business Provider Client business owners is to liberate them to do what they do best, provide high quality service to their customers. Our dedication and mastery of the "dailies" for our Provider Clients and ability to guide through small course corrections keep our Provider Clients on a path free of surprises or risks from failure to attend to and cure small issues before they take root and grow to expensive obstacles to the growth of the business. The resultant freedom our Provider Clients find now allows them to dedicate their focus to the growth of their business. These are truly liberating tools for small business owners on many significant business and personal levels.

ShiftPixy's primary Client Provider service engagement is contractual and allows Client Providers coverage access, operational and processing bandwidth from which we extract regular residual fee income monthly. Management is developing other high value touch points designed to strengthen and further monetize these Provider client engagements. Shifter user engagements will be monetized by charging for the services but keep the charges at low levels intended to drive mobile app utilization and community growth through not only shift access and opportunity management but personal access to perks an employee of a large corporation might enjoy due to the ShiftPixy economy of scale.

For more information on ShiftPixy, please visit the Company's website at http://www.ShiftPixy.com.

ShiftPixy has filed an Offering Circular for the offering of its securities on Form 1-A with the Securities and Exchange Commission but the Offering Circular has not yet become qualified. You may obtain a copy of the most recent version of the Preliminary Offering Circular with the following link: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1675634/000147793216010647/shiftpixy_1a.htm

No money or consideration is being solicited by the information in this or any other communication or information on our website, and, if sent, money will not be accepted and will be promptly returned.  No offer by a potential investor to buy our securities can be accepted and, if made, any such offer can be withdrawn before qualification of this offering by the SEC.  A potential investor's indication of interest does not create a commitment to purchase the securities we are offering. Any such indication of interest may be withdrawn or revoked, without obligation or commitment of any kind, at any time before notice of its acceptance is given and all other requirements to accept an investment from a potential investor are met after the offering qualification date. 

The offering is being made only by means of the Offering Circular. The securities in our offering may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time our Offering Circular is qualified by the SEC. Any information in this or any other communication or on our website shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to qualification for sale as provided in Regulation A+ in any such state or jurisdiction. 

http://www.shiftpixy.com

SOURCE ShiftPixy, Inc.