Gig platforms have become an increasingly important part of the economy by facilitating organizations to find temporary workers for short-term jobs. As such, gig platforms depend on the ongoing activity of gig workers. However, gig workers are not typically employees of the platform and, compared to more traditional work arrangements, gig platforms are limited in their ability to stimulate workers to become and remain active. This may result in workers exerting limited effort when working through the platform and only remaining active on the platform for a short time. This situation is only exacerbated further by the fact that workers mostly lack personal contact in their interactions with gig platforms. In this paper, we exploit a natural experiment to examine the impact of personal contact between gig workers and platform representatives on worker activity. Specifically, we focus on personal contact during the onboarding process. We find that workers who were called by a platform representative as part of their onboarding performed more jobs and earned more money (both in the range of 40-60% more) through the platform compared to workers who had not been called. We further find that this effect is mainly attributable to a 15% increased likelihood to start applying for gigs for called workers compared to non-called ones. Additional exploratory analyses suggest that the favorable effects of personal contact we observe are likely due to increased worker engagement with the gig platform.
