A Chat with Pierre Lindmark, CEO and Co-Founder at Employee Engagement Platform: Winningtemp

Winningtemp is built on a simple but powerful idea – take everything that science knows about creating successful organisations and build an intuitive data-driven platform that helps leaders to unlock the potential of their people.

Our AI-powered platform enables businesses to visualise their employee sentiment to gain a better understanding of how their workforce is faring. This then provides HR leaders with actionable insights that enhance wellbeing, increase productivity and minimise turnover. After using Winningtemp for just 12 months, our customers report on average: a 21% increase in job satisfaction amongst employees, a 26% decrease in workplace-related stress, and a 30% drop in employee turnover.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
The relationship between technology, human cognition and science has always excited me. Almost 20 years ago, I started work at a company that was involved in a national initiative to reduce sick leave across Sweden.

This project consisted of over 20 experts and researchers from Karolinska Institute all working together to utilize their various areas of expertise in order to inform and, ultimately, execute real change. It was through my involvement with this project that I first realized the value of applying scientific rigor when looking to implement HR initiatives. During this project, I realised that there was real value in applying scientific rigor to the implementation of HR initiatives.

After spending four years on this project, I discovered that my real passion lies in examining the way in which both empirical and people-led data can work together and then using this to develop projects that make a real-world difference.

With this in mind, the original plan for Winningtemp was to enable businesses to improve the employee experience using science and data. It quickly became clear that there is a real benefit of combining these two disciplines and making use of AI to provide predictions and recommendations which help to strengthen engagement and allow measurable gains in performance to be made. This can include helping to minimise sick leave or staff turnover.
 

How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?

 
The pandemic and following increase in hybrid working obviously had huge ramifications for HR. The most important change we have observed is that HR matters have finally become a top priority for C-suite figures, and this has brought with it a willingness to do better. The real challenge now lies in ensuring morale is maintained and employees remain happy, engaged, and productive as employers continue to navigate the new normal. Winningtemp has played an important role in helping businesses to navigate this difficult time and we saw an 300% increase in platform usage during the first three weeks of lockdown and this has continued to grow.

In 2020, we were grateful to secure €15.1 million in a Series B round co-led by London’s Frog Capital and Stockholm-based Bonnier Ventures. This has helped us to continue expand our software capabilities, as well as move forward with our international expansion. The Nordics is famous for being ahead of other regions when it comes to HR practises – we now want to take these learnings global and help businesses across the world with their employee wellbeing challenges.
 

What can we hope to see from Winningtemp in the future?

 
At Winningtemp, we want to keep engaging and helping employees all over the world. Our belief is that better workplaces help create better communities. The fact of the matter is most adults spend a majority of their waking hours at work. If their work environments allow them to feel engaged and thrive then this will only have a positive impact on the companies they work for and, ultimately, society at large.

My dream would be to find a way to measure the wider positive impact of what we do. Beyond reducing sick leave and burnout, what is the greater effect of a person enjoying work, feeling seen and appreciated by their colleagues. In my mind, this person will be a better partner, parent, neighbour and citizen with much more positive energy to share with society and I would love to be able to quantify that. This is what we hope to see from Winningtemp in the future.