Everyone has a story

We’re only a few months into life at Workio - we make work better by helping organisations design and build their workplace culture, and hire for culture fit using data. But even during this brief time a strong trend has become clear.

Whenever we explain to someone what we’re doing there is always a story they want to tell us.

It might be a story about their own experience of working in a company where they just didn’t fit with the atmosphere there, to the extent that within two months they were already plotting their exit.

It might be story about hiring someone who didn’t work out for culture reasons, and the challenges of moving that person out of the organisation and all the pain and disruption that brings.

Sometimes it’s a story of being involved in a merger or acquisition where the cultural mismatch between the organisations had people running for the exits as soon as possible, or, years after a merger, people still being categorised as ‘a ________ person’ depending on which of the two merged companies they came from.

Sometimes it’s a story of a friend who had a job they liked in an organisation they hated, but they kept at it for years even though they were miserable at work.

Sometimes it’s a story of more serious harassment or mental health issues that the storyteller traces directly back to the culture at their employer.

The undeniable truth is that everyone has a story - at least one story - and these are all stories of wasted time, energy, money, and human potential; stories of missed opportunity and difficulty. And these stories show us just what an opportunity we have with Workio to make real, useful, society-scale change.

We want to give people new stories. Stories about the deeply shared sense of purpose someone felt with their team or organisation, stories about the kindness between employees, stories of the great things that people achieve together, stories of the fantastic hires who dovetailed beautifully with their new team and drove a company to great new heights.

The hope for these stories is what fuels us every day to make a positive difference to organisations, to people working together.