The startup that crunches data to help companies understand, retain talent

Companies are beginning to turn to data to better understand their employees — and a startup called Peakon is hoping to ride that wave.

The platform conducts ongoing, automated surveys for thousands of corporations across 125 countries, aiming to help human resource departments better understand their people through data.

So far, Peakon has raised $68 million in venture capital, in pursuit of helping employers understand and retain their workers.

“The people metrics, in general, is starting to be something that companies want to and have to elevate,” Peakon co-founder Kasper Hulthin told YFi PM.

But how does the company extract numbers and trends from humans? “We’ve surveyed about 50 million surveys around the world in 125 countries,” Hulthin said. “So from all of that data we can really start seeing the patterns.”

According to Hulthin, the company contributes its success partially to how it protects its clients privacy.

“It’s 100% anonymous, so that’s obviously crucial to our business,” he added. “On the back of that feedback, we can then drive sort of insights into every manager in real time in the organization.”

Creative business people working at computers in open plan office

The overall goal, he said, is to “bring people metrics into the scene” of bigger data trends.

The platform has recently been analyzing data to uncover workplace trends, such as why people quit their jobs.

“One of the patterns we started seeing, is that people actually, probably about 9 months before they leave, you can start to see the curve changing” Hulthin said.

“It’s quite amazing to see the data we’re collecting and the impact it’s making,” he says.

McKenzie DeGroot is a producer at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: @degrootmckenzie

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