Start-ups have long been vying to find the ideal way to monitor workplace morale. These efforts date back to 2014, with Plasticity Labs’ now defunct web site, Officevibe, further along with UK-based WorkBuzz’s £2.3 million in investments and Spill, which raised $3.5 million for its message-based therapy app.
Loopin, born out of Bristol, UK, is now jumping into the world of “workplace measurement” with its own platform engineered with Generative AI. OpenAI’s ChaptGPT, combined with Loopin’s proprietary coaching platform, works to better understand staff while keeping user privacy secure. Feedback is given through daily “check-ins” utilizing Slack or Microsoft Teams, each employee giving anonymous updates of their own emotions through the use of emojis.
Loopin’s AI is trained with the knowledge of Ben Williams and Antony Thompson, two former Royal Marines Commandos. Williams, in particular, has plenty of experience in corporate coaching and is the author of the 2020 book “The Commando Mindset” published by Penguin.
Loopin hopes to soon become a marketplace for morale and performance coaching. Its £1.6 million ($1.9 million) seed funding was helped by a number of Angel investors. Already, the platform has 40 paying customers, including Reed, Farfetch and JD Sports.
Employee morale and well-being is something that greatly needs to be taken into consideration among employers, especially in the post-pandemic era. As put by Stuart Neal, former General Manager of Boku Identity and Chairman at Loopin, “At any one time, a staggering 45% of employees are actively thinking of leaving their job. The average cost of replacing an employee is £30,000 so the price businesses are paying for low morale is huge.”
Loopin isn’t alone in the space though. WorkBuzz, which has earned £2.6 million in funding, works with mid-market organizations of 500-5,000 employees.
Despite the presence of other start-ups, Loopin brings something extra. As explained by Ben Williams in an interview, “Our competitors measure data and then present it back to the company often through metrics, dashboards, and lots of graphs and different things like that. And that’s not a bad thing. But is that actionable? No. Is it useful and valuable in the moment? It’s okay to look at it and it’s helpful, but it doesn’t help the people that really need it, which is the employees and the managers. So, essentially, we’re acquiring that data, adding our own proprietary data and then we’re applying it to open source AI models to be able to provide personalised coaching and leadership development advice back to the employees in real time. And that’s why we believe we’re different.”
Not only is Loopin working toward individualized coaching and giving advice in real-time, but also in future will offer the capability to benchmark a company’s engagement and morale to that of other similar external organizations.
Simon Wingate, managing director of Loopin customer Reed which has more than 3,500 employees, tested the platform in order to improve connections between managers and their direct reports. “What we lacked was a real-time measure of our teams’ mood and motivations. We use Loopin as a way of really understanding how our teams are feeling,” he shares.
Loopin is a company founded by two former Royal Marines Commandos, Ben Williams and Antony Thompson. After leaving the armed forces, Ben went on to work in corporate coaching, management and as an author. His 2020 book, “The Commando Mindset”, was published by Penguin. While Antony pursued a career in software development, the two have now created Loopin, an AI-powered platform that gives companies the capability to measure work morale, provide personalized coaching and even benchmark their own morale against their competitors. Loopin has recently raised $1.9 million in a seed funding round, led by Angel investors, and boasts of 40 paying customers, including Reed, Farfetch, and JD Sports.
