A business that gathers workforce feedback to help employers attract and retain talent has raised $12 million to expand its offerings in a labor market where employees are in the driver's seat.
"Companies have started to use the feedback they get from WorkHound as operational intelligence," said Max Farrell, the CEO of WorkHound, which is headquartered in both Chattanooga and Des Moines, Iowa, but has employees across the country.
The business was launched to help trucking companies reach and support a workforce that's constantly on the move, but this funding will help WorkHound serve more industries, Farrell said in a phone interview.
"We built WorkHound to serve any industry with a distributed workforce that cares about listening to people," he said. "Trucking has been our beachhead industry. This round of funding gives us the opportunity to expand our footprint to those industries facing the 'Great Resignation.'"
Staff file photo / Max Farrell, CEO of Work Hound, uses his company's mobile platform that assists truck drivers with anonymous complaints to their employers.The $12 million in funding from New York-based Level Equity is by far the largest round WorkHound has raised since it was established in 2015 and represents a new phase for the business, Farrell said. In addition to driving a tight labor market in which employers are hungry for employee feedback, the pandemic created a more geography-neutral playing field for chasing investment, Farrell said.
"We have been an incredibly lean and scrappy company, and some of that was because when you're out trying to raise money in the middle of the country, you often get overlooked," Farrell said. "That barrier to capital has been lowered, but it really comes down to results, and our team has done an incredible job building relationships with customers and building world-class products."
Founded in 2015 in Des Moines, WorkHound expanded to Chattanooga in 2016 to capitalize on the trucking and logistics industry. That same year, the company was included in one of the first Dynamo Fund accelerator programs organized in Chattanooga by the Lamp Post Group.
WorkHound provides real-time feedback platforms for front-line workers and raised its first seed capital in 2019 – a $1.5 million fundraising round. In 2020, the business announced it would expand its real-time feedback platform for workers in home health care and long-term care facilities.
The business employs 25 people now, and will grow as it serves more industries, Farrell said. The pandemic dramatically expanded the industries that have distributed workforces, and more companies have realized the importance of operating with empathy in the past two years, Farrell said.
"We have exciting opportunities, and now it's about getting the bandwidth to go seize the day," he said. "We have 70,000-plus workers on the platform and 80-plus companies embracing a culture of curiosity. It shows the importance of employee listening and companies making a commitment to employee feedback management. We're excited to help be a leader in this space."
Contact Mary Fortune at mfortune@timesfreepress.com. Follow her on Twitter at @maryfortune.
Staff file photo / Max Farrell, with WorkHound, receives a hug and accepts the Startup of the Year award in 2019 from CPR Wrap's Felicia Jackson.