BenchOn, a B2B talent mobility platform founded in Queensland by military veteran and former defence industry executive Tim Walmsley, has raised $650,000 in seed capital as it looks to scale nationally to meet market demand.
BenchOn solves the problem of employee underutilisation by matching a business’s idle staff to short-term contracts.
In the past eighteen months it has processed over $50 million worth of contracts across a variety of industries including defence, IT, construction, mining, engineering, cyber security and logistics.
According to the company, the problem of employee underutilisation costs the Australian economy $305 billion each year in lost productivity. Employees on the ‘bench’ is a critical issue for small to medium businesses as it cripples their cash flow and forces them to lose valuable employees.
At the same time, large organisations are frustrated that they do not have a ‘bench’ of high quality staff ready to respond to short notice tasks from their clients.
BenchOn matches these two parties and allows them to manage the peaks and troughs of their business cycle with contracts for their idle employees or high quality staff to support during surges.
Walmsley originally tried to launch the business on his own before signing up to the BlueChilli tech startup accelerator program.
“Tim is an exceptional entrepreneur who has demonstrated strong experience backed by his military background. I have high hopes for how well BenchOn will do in the market,” Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin, CEO of BlueChilli said.
This latest round of funding will support national expansion to match demand.
Walmsley said that the extra funding opens the door to broadening BenchOn’s nationwide presence.
“We are operating across 10 industries now so we have a lot of work ahead of us, but we now have the resources to take that next big step.”