A community of skilled people can then compete for the business.

PeoplePerHour.com taps into the demand for a new approach to matching the needs of employers with the needs of the employee. This has arisen because of recent profound changes in the structure of the UK workforce.

According to a survey carried out by the Equal Opportunities Commission in 2006, over 40 per cent of UK women and 10 per cent of men are now opting for part-time or occasional work patterns, rather than the traditional '9 to 5' regime.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of 2006, there were around 4.4m small business enterprises (0-49 employees) producing a third of all enterprise turnover in the country. Of these, 2.8m were sole traders.

Recognising these dramatic trends, Xenios Thrasyvoulou, founder and CEO of PeoplePerHour.com, realised that the traditional way that small businesses hired specific skills was inadequate.

The result is that thousands of occasional and one-off projects do not happen..

PeoplePerHour.com solves this problem by creating an online community that matches projects with qualified people.

The site has been trialed for the last four months and, according to Thrasyvoulou, has hit its target of 1,000 skills providers three months earlier than forecast.