Singapore-based EngageRocket has secured $322K (S$450K) in an angel round of funding from a cohort of investors. The freshly raised capital will be used to accelerate product development and scale operations to meet strong local demand.
Founded by former consultants Leong Chee Tung and Dorothy Yiu, EngageRocket enables firms to apply advanced workplace analytics to improve talent retention and productivity.
A study recently revealed that Singaporean employees were the least engaged in Asia. In addition, it concluded younger workers are found to be exceptionally unhappy. The cloud-based software analyses employee feedback in real-time to help the firms build a better work culture. The company believes it functions as a “heart-rate monitor for management” to enhance organizational health and productivity by simply automating the administration and analytics behind employee surveys, linking results to bite-sized suggestions to improve leadership style.
Leong Chee Tung, Co-founder and CEO of EngageRocket, in an official statement, said,
Creating an environment at work that engages staff contributes significantly to revenue and profit growth, improves talent retention by 59% and productivity by 21%. The problem is, most companies don’t have the data systems in place to understand how to do this reliably.
Such a tool becomes even more critical as the workforce continues to spend longer hours at work, and continues working to even later in life. The company states it would serve to lubricate the social contract between workers and companies, and improve both satisfaction at work and profits. Leong further mentioned,
The most progressive companies in the world like Google and Amazon have already made the shift to more frequent, shorter employee surveys, allowing management to calibrate behaviours and programmes with staff feedback in a more agile, responsive way. EngageRocket makes this analysis available for any company.
In an email exchange with The Tech Portal, Leong said they will concentrate on both – deepening the technology behind the product, and incorporating more parameters to make it all the more useful. He added they aim to maintain best-in-class capabilities in the modules they already offer in the market while growing the modules to achieve their objective of providing employee feedback and analytics needs throughout the lifecycle of each employee to guide data-driven people decisions. Sharing the vision of EngageRocket, he said,
Our vision is to create great workplaces through ‘people analytics’: by adopting a data-driven approach to draw insights from employee feedback, we enable leaders to build better cultures in their companies, one team at a time.
Leong strongly believes EngageRocket stands out amongst various other analytics firms. He attributes this to the fact that they seamlessly utilize artificial intelligence and automation to handle the administration, analytics and management advice generated from employee feedback, helping leaders at all levels to grow engagement, motivation, and productivity sustainably in their company.
This development marks the touchdown of firms specializing in people analytics in this region. A 2016 report by Deloitte estimated that the market for feedback tools was $300 million in size, and growing at 100% annually. Huang Shao-Ning, co-founder of JobsCentral Group and one of the investors in EngageRocket this round, stressed the importance of employee engagement data as it contributes to the high performance of teams. She went on to say,
EngageRocket founders, Chee Tung and Dorothy, have the right combination of domain knowledge, industry insights and technical knowhow to offer such a solution.
The company has a presence in various countries in Southeast Asia, with a footprint even in Mauritius. Leong added their focus through this round of funding is to refine and streamline their business model and product, before a heavier, dedicated effort to the broader international market. When asked about the company’s future plans – whether they will gear up for another round or are ready to go ahead with a possible acquisition, he answered,
We are keeping all options open, but it is highly likely that we will reach a point where fresh capital would be needed for stronger internationalization efforts.
