Active Economics & Business Education & Skills

Smart Worker Passport

Funder InnovateUK (part of UKRI)
Recipient organisation Lightning Riders Limited
Funding £329K
Period May 2025 — Jul 2026

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

Every time a UK gig worker applies for a new job, they must re-submit their credentials and experience from scratch—a process that takes three to four weeks per application. This matters because the UK has 4.4 million gig workers, and 52% of them earn less than the minimum wage. The current system forces workers to repeatedly verify their identity, qualifications, and work history with each new company, costing the gig economy £1.9 billion in 2023 from lost time waiting for jobs. Workers also lack access to their own consolidated payment history, making it difficult to leverage past experience for better pay or to identify which companies pay fairly. Rodeo, a UK-based worker tech company, is developing a Smart Worker Passport—a reusable, verified digital record that consolidates a gig worker’s credentials, work history, and earnings from multiple employers into a single standardised document. The passport uses automation to combine earnings data from various sources, streamlining onboarding with new clients and reducing verification costs for both workers and companies. If successful, this system could cut the weeks-long onboarding process to minutes, help workers command higher pay based on a complete work record, and reduce the £1.9 billion annual cost of idle waiting time across the gig economy.

View original technical description
Rodeo is a UK-based worker tech SME led by Alfie Pearce-Higgins (project manager and CEO) and Rob Farthing (technical lead and senior back-end engineer). The UK has 4.4M gig workers -- independent workers who must provide their credentials and experience for verification each time they approach a new company for work. This typically takes 3-4 weeks and is costly for companies and workers. A lack of access to payment information across companies makes it challenging for gig workers to leverage their past experience for better pay or determine the best companies to work for. This creates a hardship, as 52% of gig workers earn less than the minimum wage. In addition, gig workers spend considerable time waiting for jobs, which cost the gig economy £1.9B in 2023\. To mitigate this problem, Rodeo is developing its Smart Worker Passport, a reusable, verified record of gig workers' credentials. Rodeo simplifies the gig economy by allowing workers to consolidate their work and earnings history from various employers along with their credentials into a secure, standardised, transparent, and verified record. This comprehensive virtual document streamlines the onboarding process with new clients and reduces associated expenses. Rodeo's Digital Smart Worker Passport pioneers the use of automation to allow workers to combine their earnings data from various sources. It is the first to provide gig workers with a reusable verified work record that can be employed to apply and onboard with prospective clients.

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Original classification

Collaborative R&D

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