In the age of the #MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter and overall social change, a local startup is using its tech to help protect employees and employers get rid of harassment and discrimination in the workplace.
With the goal of getting its product in more companies, Dallas-based independent harassment and discrimination reporting, investigating and resolution platform Work Shield announced landing a $4.11 million Series A. The funding round was led by local public and private securities holding company Hoak & Co. North Texas private investor Jeff Estes joined the round, along with other undisclosed strategic insurance and benefits investors.
"Our team is excited to expand and continue providing real voices for employees, as well as real protection and guidance for companies to ultimately build positive, safe and sustainable workplace cultures," said Jared Pope, founder and CEO of Work Shield, in a prepared statement. "This financing allows us to serve more employers and be an actionable, measured solution for companies looking to take a stand against discrimination and harassment."
The startup plans to use the new funding to expand its sales team as it looks to build out its technology, while adding new clients and accelerating growth. Currently, Work Shield has a seven-person team.
When NTX Inno spoke to Pope last year, the company was expanding its platform to encompass all of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1963, which protects workers on the basis of race, sex, color, religion and national origin. Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that businesses cannot discriminate based on sexual orientation as well. In addition, Work Shield was adding psychological counseling services, an ethics and fraud hotline and a 2.0 version of its software. At the time, the company’s technology was covering more than 50,000 workers and the company had recently expanded its client base outside the U.S., with a company in Scotland.
“What I often tell people is just because you put this on doesn’t mean you have a problem, what it means is that you partner with Work Shield; what it means is you have zero-tolerance towards harassment, you have zero-tolerance for discrimination, and you’re going to put a procedure in place that if it does happen, we will know about it and it’s not allowed,” Pope said at the time.
Pope said he sees the company’s platform as almost a literal piece of armor for businesses and their employees. Work Shield’s technology take harassment and discrimination claims and the follow-up out of the hands of a company. It allows reports to be filed via phone or internet. Work Shield then contacts local law firms and gets attorneys to investigate claims and make recommendations for resolving them. A report is then sent out to all parties. According to statistics from 2017 by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, there were more than 84,000 discrimination charges filed, resulting in about $398 million in costs to businesses and governments.
"Discrimination affects every industry and every size organization."
Internally, the company is working to improve its own corporate culture. Joining other local tech companies like Addison’s Bottle Rocket, Work Shield announced that it would begin making Juneteenth a company holiday and called on other company founders to take concrete steps to educate themselves on issues of racial discrimination and to remove it from their workplaces in a Medium post.
“Discrimination affects every industry and every size organization. Companies are starting to realize that the status quo of "check-the-box" compliance has been shattered and that it's no longer a question of "if" something happens, but a matter of "when" something happens,” Pope wrote. “Employers who remain silent will be diminished. Employers who don't take meaningful action to combat discrimination in their workplaces will suffer. Employers who do not give their employees a real voice to be heard in the face of undeniable, pervasive racism and discrimination will be broken.”
