Flexport vs Zencargo: Does Establishment Mean Stronger Employment?

Do country predominance, asset management, and years in business impact employment specifics in the freight industry? That’s the question I look to answer by comparing two global freight carriers: Flexport and Zencargo.

Both Flexport and Zencargo place emphasis on global freight services through state-of-the-art technology; however, there’s a $2 billion difference in capital raising activities. Flexport was founded in 2013 in San Francisco and boasts $2.3 billion in capital infusions over the past decade. On the contrary, the 2017 London rising star Zencargo shows pennies of funding compared to Flexport, with $66.5 million in series funding over the past 5 years.

Most would assume that the stark difference in company size would automatically preclude employment differences, yet this isn’t entirely true. Yes, Zencargo does retain 20x the employees, but the actual breakdown of work experience, retention, and gender distributions may surprise you.

Let’s first look at work experience. Both Zencargo and Flexport have an average work experience between 5 and 10 years, which is expected given that both of these companies have not been around longer than a decade. The work experience distribution breakdown is where things get interesting.

Flexport retains more employees in the 1–3, 3–5, and 5–10 year categories compared to Zencargo with statistics by Osterus showing 6.3% to 5.1%, 12.9% to 6%, and 40.6% to 34.4%, respectively. The opposite is true for the 10–15 and 15+ year categories with Zencargo showing a 25.2% to 21.3% and 28.9% to 17.2% lead in retention.

Is this what you expected? Despite only being around for 5 years, Zencargo has employees with over 10 years of experience while Flexport attracts talent under 10 years. Due to the rapid growth of Flexport in the past 10 years, they may be looking to attract younger talent while Zencargo relies on experienced advisors to make strategic business decisions. The experience discrepancy isn’t necessarily a bad thing depending on the hiring policies and growth strategies of the company.

We can see that both companies are male dominant in most positions. Males heavily dominate the finance, software development, and C suite aspects of operations with a 7:3 ratio. The data shows that Zencargo’s C suite is composed of 87.5% males and a mere 12.5% females while Flexport reports 63.03% males to 36.13% females.

Females are more apparent in the operations and customer service segments of these two companies. Females slightly outnumber the males in Zencargo in these two categories while female representation is still less than half in Flexport.

These statistics highlight that both Zencargo and Flexport have room for improvement to diversify the breakdown of their workforce, especially in the finance and software development sectors. Offering more job opportunities, scouting for talent at local institutions, and being transparent about inclusivity are viable steps that can promote diversity in the workplace.

Next, let’s analyze the breakdown of each job title to uncover similarities and differences. Flexport delegates the highest number of employees to customer service, which is around 15.45% of their workforce, while Zencargo maintains a focus on operations with 16.67% of employees in the category. The second largest employment category flipped with Flexport showing 13.37% in operations and Zencargo retaining 8.56% in customer service.

An emphasis on customer service and operations is expected from both companies. You can’t continue to grow without detailed logistics and strong customer conversion metrics. Flexport’s top priority is customer service, showing the establishment of the business and the strive to protect brand image by ensuring customer satisfaction. Zencargo is still trying to work out all the operational details, supporting that most employees are in that category with customer service trailing right behind.

The #3, #4, and #5 spots remain the same for both companies with a high number of employees found in software development, finance, and sales, respectively. A key difference between the two companies, is that investors rank #6 for Zencargo while they are found last for Flexport. Once again, this shows the establishment of Flexport compared to Zencargo.

When it comes to the background of the employees found at each company, there are some similarities to note as well. Most employees in operations at Zencargo worked at a logistic company in the past, such as APL Logistics, Dhl Industrial Projects, and Expeditors while employees in the customer service department at Flexport commonly worked at Expeditors, Maersk, and Panalpina.

A background in logistics makes sense for employees of Zencargo as most of their personnel retain over 5 years of experience. 3.38% of Flexport’s employees in operations previously worked at Uber, which is a job that many college students hold when focusing on their studies. This further supports the hiring goals of a younger generation for Flexport while Zencargo looks to obtain experienced individuals.

Finally, let’s go through the employment duration at both companies. Since both companies are relatively new, we don’t have statistics on long-term employment; however, we can see discrepancies within the first 5 years of employment. Zencargo retains a higher number of first year employees with a 54.6% to 44.4% comparison to Flexport; however, Flexport retains a 47.6% to 37.2% employee retention in the 1–3 year category. The retention in the 3–5 and 5–10 year categories are around the same for both companies.

The key driver for this industry data was Osterus, which was utilized to pinpoint key metrics surrounding employment in Flexport and Zencargo. This software program utilizes data from a multitude of different sources to assess patterns and uncover similarities and irregularities. We can then interpret this information to uncover added insight into the freight industry as a whole.

The conclusions on the need for added diversity and hiring strategies were easily interpreted from the data from Osterus without hours of research. Within no time at all, the insight data provides us on employment trends in companies will shed light on the company that best meets our employment standards, cost of living, quality of life, and more.

To learn more or compare additional companies, reach out to contact us directly, on LinkedIn or schedule a demo to dive into even more cool data.