For growing companies, a great deal of focus is centered around improving the product and generating revenue. But just as important are questions around the employee experience and company culture. Are our benefits good enough? Is our company diverse? Are our employees happy?
A new Chicago startup wants to help companies use data to answer those questions and hundreds more related to improving the employee experience, and offer solutions on how to fix problem areas.
Founded by Tom Alexander, the former COO at 1871 and communications director for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Holistic wants to help companies take a data-driven approach to making the workplace better for their employees. Looking at a company's data around things like salaries, benefits and employee retention, combined with surveys conducted with workers, leadership and past employees, Holistic is able to examine a host of different factors that make up a strong workplace culture.
Holistic then spits out what it calls a Holistic Inclusion Index score, which is a number that helps quantify the type of workplace experience a business has created for its employees. Alexander likened it to a credit score for employee happiness.
"What we're doing is building sort of a data-driven solution that allows companies to understand the challenges and opportunities that are facing them and their employees," Alexander said. "We come out of that with a very accurate landscape of what's happening in the company and what its challenges are."
Beyond just a score of how the company is doing, Holistic provides a comprehensive report on areas where a business is lacking and recommends solutions on how to improve. For example, if it's identified that a company's employees want a giving benefit that lets them donate to important causes, Holistic recommends software that allows the company to offer that. If a business needs a more diverse applicant pool, Holistic can connect them with the resources to make their hiring process more inclusive.
Officially launched this week, Holistic is working with several local companies, including Chicago startup ThinkCERCA, and is continuing to add new clients. Alexander said the ideal company to use Holistic is a tech company or a professional services firm between 30 to 300 employees.
Alexander spent nearly three years as the deputy communications director in the Mayor's office, leaving in 2014 to join 1871. As COO, Alexander said his worked focused heavily on diversity and inclusion at the Chicago tech hub, and he knew he wanted to start a tech firm focused on those areas when he left.
But beyond just evaluating the diversity of a company, Holistic aims to provide a comprehensive snapshot of the employee experience---from the hiring process, to employee on-boarding, to workplace culture, to eventually when an employee leaves.
"[Holistic] is a technology company devoted to improving the entirety of the employee experience," he said. "Our premise is, companies have all this data and it's not being used very effectively ... we can take all of that information and build a suite of services that's customized for their challenges."
