Startup Spotlight: Welliba Co-Founder on improving employee experience through tech

Established in 2021, Welliba aims to improve employee experience through the use of AI and behavioral science.

Headquartered in Ireland, the startup has raised €8 million through its founders and has received no funding from external investors. It counts companies including Accenture, Louis Vutton and Medtronic among its clients.

Welliba was also named winner of the UNLEASH Startup award at UNLEASH World 2024.

John Brazier: What does winning the UNLEASH Startup award mean for Welliba?

Katarina Coppé : This is recognition that what we’ve launched to solve business problems is actually resonating with industry experts.

It also shows that clients are actually sharing what they’ve learned and giving us their business. And this shows we’re on the path of helping customers solve key business problems: We’re very happy to have achieved that.

JB: What is your USP? What makes your proposition special?

KC: We offer personalized recommendations to help everyone in their own role, whether they're an employee, a HR manager or a line manager, to help them understand what they can do to improve their workforce and experience at work.

We know that's actually quite a complex thing, so unless you take it holistically, it's very difficult to tackle.

But we're trying to give personalized guidance, to give everyone the opportunity to take ownership of what’s within their control.

The other product that we described today is actually an ‘outside in’ perspective which helps customers not only to look internally and listen to their people but understand what's externally being said about working for them as an organization.

Understanding where an organization lags, and potentially leverage its competitive advantage - that's the advice we can give with our external insights.

JB: How are you trying to change the world?

KC: We’re trying to help organizations use technology in a smart way, to identify personalization needs based on behavioral science, not just gut feeling.

We try to predict the key metrics that people care about, such as retention, flight risk, absenteeism, physical wellbeing, trust, and psychological safety.

We know all of these are great things, but people don't really know where to start when they have to tackle those. We are giving them actionable guidance on what to do in their own teams to make situations in their unique environment better to drive better outcomes at scale.We know all of these are great things, but people don't really know where to start when they have to tackle those. We are giving them actionable guidance on what to do in their own teams to make situations in their unique environment better to drive better outcomes at scale.

JB: What is your key message to HR leaders?

KC: Innovate, continue to disrupt the status quo thinking.

Sometimes people are just hesitant to move to something new because it feels like heavy lifting and they might make no decision, rather than a decision to try.

My recommendation would be to always start small - try to see where you can get impact, and if you see impact in a small team, then grow the use case and use that as a selling point internally.

So, try to find opportunities where there’s a problem child, demonstrate impact on a smaller group, and then scale.

JB: What are the next strategic goals for Welliba?

KC: We're on a good path. We have already launched in nine countries, so we are trying to internationalize with our enterprise-grade solutions. We want to help companies multilingually, and the makeup of our company also represents that international flavor.

It's important to have a variety of groups of people that can understand the international scope and what customers need in different markets.

UNLEASH Startup | Spotlight is a monthly Editorial interview series where we speak to and profile the best and brightest technology startups the HR world has to offer. Want to feature in the series? Get in touch with john@unleash.ai to find out more.