Talivest Raises $1M for Employee Energy Tool
3rd November 2021
Talivest, an employee analytics software company, has raised $1 million from investors to accelerate the launch of its new Employee Energy Tool, a product that directly addresses the causes of discontentment and burnout among employees. The Employee Energy Tool explores employee well-being and is used to predict employee engagement and flag employee burnout – two of the main factors driving the acceleration in the “Great Resignation”.
The new funding is a follow on from a previous round in 2019 and is led by entrepreneurs Dan and Linda Kiely. Other previous investors include Nicolas Berggruen, Luxor Capital, Charlie Songhurst, Bryan Meehan (Blue Bottle Coffee), Anne Heraty (CPL), Liam Casey (PCH International) and Ronan Harris (Google). The investment will allow Talivest to implement the tool with customers and hire key roles within the organisation including sales, customer success, marketing and technology to continue its platform development and customer growth.
Co-Founder & COO, Laura Belyea explains that, “Over the past two years, and more specifically, the past two months, we have seen the most dramatic shift in the labour market in a century. Consequently, organisations need to move on from outdated employee engagement scores – and focus on employee energy. Traditional employee engagement activity looks at how engaged employees are – but we see that employees can be highly engaged, but at the same time, can be unproductive. The difference is that
employee energy is a much better indicator of the happiness and productivity of an employee, which is what sustains high performance.
Organisations need a tool to understand the root cause of issues such as discontentment, in order to move the dial, and this is exactly what we’re building into our employee experience platform. Organisations that take the time to learn why their employees may be thinking about quitting will have a huge advantage, as we see this “Great Resignation” continuing for at least another 6 to 12 months.”
A survey conducted by Talivest of 200 Irish executives revealed that energy levels are low across the board at 52%, with the majority of employees citing the relationship between themselves and line-managers; and workload and emotional demands, being the biggest factors draining energy.
The old adage, “You don’t quit a job, you quit a manager,” has never been more relevant.
On the investment, Dan Kiely commented, “Linda and I have always been passionate about employee experience – we have learned first hand the importance of creating an engaged and energised workforce and that measuring each stage of the employee journey is critical, not only for your team itself, but also for your customer success. Jayne and Laura have built a truly global business and we are excited to join them for the next phase of growth – providing a solution that gives employees a strong voice – and the tool for organisations to really listen.”
As part of the investment, Barry Doyle, Investment Director at MASV, will come onboard as an advisor to Talivest. Barry Doyle is an experienced technology executive having previously been CFO at Storyful when it was acquired by News Corp, as well as being the former CFO at xSellco, one of Europe’s fastest growing technology companies. At MASV, Barry works with a number of high growth businesses including Vudini and Open For Vintage, and is also a director of Republic of Work, the technology innovation hub in Cork.
The Employee Energy Tool addresses three main areas – Energy Boost; Energy Drains; and Employee Energy.
Energy boosts are the positive emotional, physical and social aspects of work. This area looks specifically at the relationship between the line-manager and the employee. It looks at autonomy and how much freedom an employee has while working and how much ownership they feel they have for their work. And social support which refers to the employees feeling they are cared about and valued in the workplace, and belong to a supportive network.
Energy drains are the physical or emotional stressors that deplete employees’ energy. Drains can eventually lead to burnout and attrition. This area looks specifically at an employee’s work-life conflict. Their workload and the amount of work an employee has to do and how hard it is to complete. And emotional demands dealing with strong negative feelings such as sorrow, anger, desperation or frustration at work.
The employee energy score represents an employees’ overall ability to focus, work efficiently, think creatively, and make decisions.
This is broken down into four categories. Occupational stress, referring to the ongoing stress an employee experiences. Presenteeism refers to the issue of employees who are not fully functioning in the workplace. Professional isolation refers to a sense of isolation from peers, and subjective well-being or how happy employees feel.
Employees across the globe are isolated, burned out, and disengaged. From organisational research, we know that employee energy matters because energised employees have a high sense of urgency to get things done. Having a high level of energy allows employees to be at their best, their most productive and flourish. This energy results in higher levels of individual, team and organisational performance.
About Talivest
Headquartered in Cork, Talivest was launched in 2018 by co-founders Jayne Ronayne and Laura Belyea. The platform enhances how people and organisations engage with each other throughout the employee lifecycle. Fuelled by predictive analytics and guided by employee data intelligence, it enables organisations to boost retention, employee experience and workforce strategic planning. Talivest measures the entire employee experience from onboarding right through to off-boarding. This provides organisations with key data insights to every important stage of their employee life cycle. Talivest customers include global companies like Immedis, Entain and Irish Distillers.
Image (l-R): Laura Belyea and Jayne Ronayne, co-founders of Tailvest.
