Crowdsourcing, the outsourcing of projects and assignments to the worldwide online community, is a form of working that has significantly gained in popularity in the last few years as a result of digitization. More and more people are taking the opportunity to earn money independent of time and place. At the same time, crowdsourcing often comes in for criticism due to a lack of standards and transparency. Therefore, a number of well-known crowdsourcing providers have agreed on a code of conduct in which they commit to fair conditions and clear principles. etventure startup POSpulse with its digital market research app, ShopScout, is one of the signatories.

Fair conditions for crowdsourcing

The project was initiated in 2015 through Testbirds, a provider for the crowdtesting of websites, apps, and IoT applications. A revised code of conduct was published a short time ago, in which the regulations were expanded and fleshed out. The aim is to establish generally valid guidelines for crowdworking that complement the legislation, and to make this way of working into a real win-win situation for employers and crowdworkers. The number of signatories has also increased. In addition to ShopScout, seven other companies have officially committed to uphold the guidelines. IC Metall was also involved in developing the code of conduct as an employee representative.

The code of conduct contains, among other things, principles of data privacy, task definition, and communication. The revised version now also contains more detailed regulations for managing complaints from crowdworkers and on payment conditions. Deadlines and payment cycles must be disclosed, and remuneration must be paid at least once a month.

“Even before signing the code of conduct, we at ShopScout had committed to fair crowd pay. We believe it is important that our community is appropriately remunerated for its efforts – also in the interests of data quality for our corporate clients. We are delighted that we are now officially part of the code of conduct initiative and are convinced we can make a positive impact on the industry through exchanging information with other crowdsourcing providers,” explained Wolfgang Mauer, Head of Community Management at ShopScout. “We want to use the code of conduct to make the point that crowdworking and fair working conditions are not mutually exclusive.”