Lorna Davidson, founder of Liverpool-based digital recruitment platform RedWigWam, says the fast-growing firm is on track to turn over £2.5m this year. Tony McDonough reports

Liverpool entrepreneur Lorna Davidson believes her online recruitment business – currently turning over around £2.5m – can become an £80m turnover business within five years.

And if that sounds ambitious, the founder of RedWigWam can point to her previous experience of successfully building a previous business – field marketing agency Tactical Solutions, which she sold for more than £15m in 2011.

RedWigWam employs 14 people at its base in Baltic Creative and has just recruited is 90,000th worker for its 2,000-strong client base of employers who use the online platform to find short-term, flexible workers for part-time or ad-hoc roles.

Among the companies which have used the firm’s service are Tesco, Co-op, Morrisons, Deliveroo, Carlsberg, Papa Johns and The Collective.

The idea for the business was borne out of the frustration Lorna experienced while running Tactical Solutions when she found it difficult to find good temporary staff. RedWigWam uses algorithms to connect within minutes workers with employers’ short-term or ad-hoc opportunities.

The company, established in 2016 and, since then, more than 1.3m hours of work have been carried out by WigWammers. Employers can post a job for free, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The roles are then matched to fully-vetted workers who have the correct skills and time to take them on.

Lorna said: “There are more than 2.5m people in the UK who want to work in temporary jobs because it suits their lifestyle. This includes students, returning mums and dads, the recently retired, people on benefits and those who have been made redundant.

“The current recruitment model of search, post a CV and wait to hear back doesn’t work for so many people. At RedWigWam we see ourselves as the ‘Tinder’ of recruitment. We tap into the huge potential workforce looking to get access to temporary jobs and our clever software sends them jobs on our system that suit them.”

As well as championing flexible work, RedWigWam is spearheading a post Brexit workforce. Every worker’s Right to Work in the UK is checked using Facebanx live streaming software, the world’s first fully integrated facial recognition biometric technology.

All temporary staff are treated with the same rights as full-time staff with access to holiday pay, sick pay and make their NICs and pay taxes where appropriate. Hirers are also encouraged to pay Living Wage and not just Minimum Wage.

Lorna has also made North West, Ireland and Wales shortlist in this year’s Forward Ladies National Awards. She is one of four women from the region to be nominated in the Female Entrepreneur category.