Swedish start–up Stravito began leveraging a digital mental health platform, after realising that some of its workers felt disengaged while working from home.
During the pandemic, Swedish startup company Stravito noticed that not all employees were comfortable working from home. Transitioning from a typical office-based company with 70 employees tied to offices in Stockholm and Amsterdam, things changed seemingly overnight when they were forced to work from home.
While the new remote work set-up was well received by the majority of staff, Sarah Lee, founder and chief of staff, realised how challenging it was to gauge the mood and well-being of the employees. One specific incident was eye-opening.
“An employee reached out and revealed that they were not feeling well at all, and it had been going on for a while,” Lee said. “I thought, ‘how did I miss this?’ So, I immediately realised that we needed support to monitor how our employees were doing in a time when everyone was working behind screens.”
As a software company whose service is used by global corporations, user-friendliness was a key factor when Lee was looking for a new provider of an employee net promoter score service. Other than the standard survey questions, Lee wanted to find a service that could easily identify when an employee wasn’t doing well. By chance, she received an email forwarded to her from the company Lägereld, a digital platform for mental health support, and this sparked her interest. After a few meetings, Stravito chose them.
The ability to identify employees who may not be comfortable or willing to share their well-being with their manager was a main factor in choosing Lägereld. Employers receive the results of how employees are doing at a group level, and if someone chooses to seek support from a psychologist, the employer covers the cost. This way well-being and employee satisfaction are monitored while honoring employee privacy.
“Previously, in the office environment, we could check in with employees face-to-face and discover when someone wasn’t feeling well or didn’t enjoy their work. Remote work brought about uncertainty and fear as an employer not knowing how our employees were doing. With Lägereld, we as a company feel secure in knowing that we have it under control,” Lee said.
Lee emphasizes that a key aspect of Lägereld’s service is the ability to get a general sense of how people are doing, but also to see how it looks in individual teams, and different regions, and how it evolves. The positive feedback is shared by employees as well. Stravito has found that response rates are good, with a general response frequency of around 50%, often rising to 60%. Clicking through the answers to the six questions takes employees about 30 seconds.
Stravito has been using Lägereld for a year and a half, and every month they measure employees’ enjoyment, motivation, pride, workload, and relationship—parameters predetermined by the technology. Everything is rated on a scale from one to five. Sometimes, the reports have shown temporary dips, for example during a reorganization or when a manager leaves. However, Stravito has generally maintained consistently high scores, with an average of over four points on all parameters. Lee believes that the stable high results are largely due to meticulous recruitment and ongoing efforts to build and develop the organizational culture.
“It’s not that we hire people and make them happy,” Lee says. “We are very careful in the recruitment process and hire capable individuals who contribute not only with their knowledge and experience but also their personalities, diversity, and willingness to collaborate.”
Prioritizing employees’ well-being and having action plans are generally considered important by most company leaders. Unfortunately, in the start-up world, these matters often fall by the wayside. When growth, fundraising, and recruitment need to happen simultaneously and quickly, personnel issues are often sidelined. With Lägereld, Stravito can ensure and feel confident in building a stable and successful company with a culture and working environment where employees’ well-being is not neglected.
