VibeCatch: The Startup Taking A Scientific Approach To Employee Engagement


As a serial entrepreneur Juha Huttunen knows just how important a committed team working towards a mutually shared and meaningful goal is to a startup’s success.

And as founder and CEO of Finnish software company Rakettitiede, where many of its 20-strong team worked remotely in customer premises, he needed to take extra steps to ensure that everyone’s voice was heard and their feelings taken on board, so that everyone played a part in making the company a better place to work.

He designed the first iteration of VibeCatch, an employee engagement tool that would help him to better understand his employees and ensure any potential issues were spotted early.

“At the time of developing the tool we didn't have any engagement issues,” says Huttunen. “The decision to create the first version of VibeCatch was purely a proactive move.”

It proved to be so effective that he decided to break out VibeCatch and develop it as a separate business. A year on it counts several major enterprises among its customers. Business leaders not only have a deeper understanding of workforce sentiment, they can also be more proactive in identifying and resolving any issues, resulting in greater productivity.

VibeCatch works by sending out periodical emails and Slack messages etc., to remind people to give feedback by answering a few carefully selected questions at a time.

It automatically analyzes the results and provides the managers with information about what exactly should be improved and how to get the biggest impact on both employee engagement and productivity.

Emphasizing the measurable and quantifiable link between engagement and productivity is key, says Huttunen.

“Most people agree that engaged employees are more productive,” he says. “What hasn’t previously been understood is what will improve engagement and productivity and by how much.”

Having met Professor Marko Kesti, whose research led to the development of his QWL (quality of working life) theory relating to employee engagement, Huttunen realised they could now quantify in monetary terms what they had always known: that taking care of your people takes care of your business.

This new approach to gathering employee feedback was not without its challenges. Organisations that traditionally carry out large employee surveys every other year may find increasing the frequency difficult, as they need to be able to react much faster.

“And if HR is conducting the surveys within their own silo it can be difficult to secure management interest,” says Huttunen. “As a result they contribute little towards business development.”

The resistance to the need for more frequent surveys was exacerbated by the fact that VibeCatch’s survey method is quite different to previous methodologies.

Nevertheless Huttunen decided to start pitching VibeCatch to a few prospects in the very early stages and gathering customer feedback on the concept. At the same time, market research was highlighting continuous listening as an emerging HR trend. This, combined with the positive customer feedback coming in, convinced Huttunen of VibeCatch’s commercial potential, and backed by Professor Kesti’s research and support, it was launched as a startup.

However, while employee engagement is a top priority for business leaders it is also a crowded commercial marketplace. With major companies dedicated to engagement surveys and plenty of new startups, some well funded, offering modern solutions for continuous employee listening, getting major clients on board was always going to be difficult.

Unfazed, Huttunen insists that their competitors’ products lack the science and the evidence that they are moving the needle that the CEO really cares about; increasing profits.

He says: “We’ve heard our competitors use statements like ‘engagement increased by 12%’, but all that means is that their survey scores are better. We have examples where EBIT has increased by 25%, HCROI (human capital return on investment) has increased by 6%, sick leave declined by 75% etc. These are the numbers that top management cares about.”

VibeCatch, he says, provides tangible results based on 15 years of academic research and practical experience. “But of course we still have a long way to go before we are a globally known big brand,” he adds.

For the time being, VibeCatch’s business is predominantly in Finland, where it works with multiple major Finnish companies that operate internationally. The company currently employs 14 people and is on track to turn over €500,000 ($592,000) this year, a significant increase on the previous year.

VibeCatch recently secured a funding round of €600,000 from Superhero Capital, a Finnish early-stage VC, and angels Sami Inkinen, and Nicolas Brabeck-Letmathe, whose father is the long-term CEO of Nestle. This will be used to fund its expansion to Western European and North American markets. The company also receives support from the Finnish government for product development.

Josh Bersin, one of the most well known HR influencers, has said that one of the most important jobs for HR is to increase employee productivity. “We couldn’t agree more,” says Huttunen. “And to our knowledge we are the only company that has a credible tool to help companies achieve this.”

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