Opening up to all

We’re very excited (and a little nervous) for Workio’s new app to be up and running. It’s been a journey, which our CTO Allan Stewart expertly laid out in this blog on the building process.

I want to talk about how our new product helps employees and employers, with a bit of history thrown in.

Since our very first, pretty shaky MVP, we’ve moved from Typeform, to Tars, to Surveysparrow - each great services in their own way - to our own tech in gathering data from employees. We’ve gone from twenty minutes or so for each employee to complete the process down to just eight minutes now.

We ask each employee questions in three key areas: how are things for you day-to-day; how would you like them to be; what’s the relative importance of different aspects of work (purpose, money, role, progression etc). This process is now the fastest and cleanest it’s ever been in our app.

Data processing and analysis has lived in Google Sheets from day one, but now takes place in our own Firebase database on Google Cloud Platform. The processing used to take around five-to-ten minutes per employee, and another two or three hours for each company, but now takes place instantly and automatically.

Our data analysis still involves the Workio team working through the processed data to derive insights for now, but with the processing being automated, the analysis becomes much easier and faster too.

Finally, the presentation of the results used to be via a Google Slides deck and in-person presentation and are now be provided via the app, supported with a conference call.

The biggest improvement is that now, any employee can use Workio - not just those who work with one of our existing customers.

We’ve made this change because our mission has always been to make work better and that starts with employees understanding their own needs and desires better. With Workio, employees discover what it is about their workplaces that is most important to them, and to what extent they’re having their needs and desires met.

This is why we think of Workio as a mirror, for individuals and companies. It’s not that we don’t know what we each look like, but a mirror helps us check our assumptions and helps us notice things we wouldn’t otherwise.

So, spread the word far and wide - Workio is here to make work better, and is now open to all.