Worker burnout is real. Reports suggest that work-related chronic stress could be costing businesses up to $190 billion annually in reduced output and sick days, not to mention the much-discussed \u201cGreat Resignation\u201d where workers are jumping ship in search of a greater work-life balance. In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared burnout an \u201coccupational phenomenon,\u201d adding it to its International Classification of Diseases.<\/p>\n
This is a problem that Ambr is setting out solve, with a platform that promises to address worker burnout preventatively. The company is demoing its wares at TC Disrupt this week as part of the Battlefield 200, and we caught up with the founders before and during the event to take a closer look at an early iteration of its product.<\/p>\n
Ambr was founded in February this year by Zoe Stones, Steph Newton and Jamie Wood, a trio of former Uber managers who witnessed the impact of worker burnout firsthand.<\/p>\n
\u201cBurnout was a problem across our teams, and as managers and individuals, we didn\u2019t know what to do to prevent it,\u201d Chief Product Officer Wood explained. \u201cWe researched the causes of burnout and learnt that burnout is primarily the result of workplace factors like poor relationships, unmanageable workloads, poor time boundaries and a lack of control.\u201d<\/p>\n
The founders, who are all based in London, are in the process of making their first hires and raising a pre-seed round of funding, which it said it expects to close \u201cin the coming weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burnout data<\/h2>\n
Ambr\u2019s technology currently relies on self-reported check-in data from Slack, with a configurable survey-like system for gathering feedback from workers.<\/p>\n
Worker feedback. Image Credits:<\/strong> Ambr<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But while this kind of in-app survey functionality isn\u2019t exactly unique, the company is in the process of developing additional tools to proactively figure out whether a workforce is at a higher risk of hitting burnout. This includes using natural language processing (NLP) to identify whether workers are happy to talk about what they\u2019re doing outside of work or whether they always talk shop.<\/p>\n This will mean using data from an open-ended question in the daily Slack check-in survey, which asks \u201cWhat\u2019s on your mind today? Share any work or non-work topics.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>The idea here is that if a worker only ever mentions work stuff, then they may be at risk of burnout, though in reality it\u2019s probably an imperfect indication given that people are less inclined to talk about personal things with an automated survey than they would be with a human work colleague.<\/p>\n Worker feedback. Image Credits:<\/strong> Ambr<\/p>\n<\/div>\n While all NLP analysis is apparently anonymized, with the resulting aggregated data only accessible to management, it would be better applied to more organic conversations within public Slack channels or Zoom calls, though this would obviously raise greater privacy concerns even if the data is anonymized.<\/p>\n At any rate, this gives some indication as to the types of things that Ambr are working on as it looks to automate the process of assessing burnout risk.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re investigating other features and integrations in the future that may leverage NLP but nothing yet on our product roadmap,\u201d CEO Zoe Stones said.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, the company is exploring using anonymized data from other workplace tools such as email and calendar software. This could work in a number of ways. For example, it could detect whether someone is emailing excessively in the evening or on weekends, or perhaps they have wall-to-wall meetings for 90% of the week \u2014 a scenario that could force someone to work far more than their allotted hours to keep their head above water.<\/p>\n Wood also said that there\u2019s potential farther down the road to integrate with human resource information systems (HRIS) to identify workers not taking their full vacation allowance.<\/p>\n Ultimately, this gives companies valuable data on work culture, helping them address smaller issues before they escalate into full-blown problems.<\/p>\n Ambr analytics. Image Credits:<\/strong> Ambr<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But spotting risk factors is just one element of this. Ambr is also working on \u201cnudges\u201d that serve workers gentle reminders inside their core workplace tools, perhaps suggesting ways they could cut down on out-of-hours work.<\/p>\n \u201cInitially, we\u2019re delivering nudges through Slack, but we plan to rapidly expand into using Microsoft Teams and also a Google Workspace add-on,\u201d Wood explained. \u201cIt is important to highlight that nudges are used sparingly \u2014 only when we think they can have a meaningful positive impact on behavior. Our principle is nudges, not nags.\u201d<\/p>\n Ambr\u2019s ethos can perhaps be juxtaposed against the myriad meditative, mental health and well-being apps that have raised bucketloads of cash in recent years. Indeed, Ambr\u2019s approach is more along the lines of, \u201cwhy fix something when you can stop it from happening in the first place?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are beginning to transition to a world of work where employees are demanding more from their employers \u2014 Ambr will enable companies to adapt to this new reality, particularly as hybrid and remote working becomes the norm and as more Gen Zers enter the workforce in the coming years,\u201d Wood said.<\/p>\n Beyond the usual health and well-being players which, according to Wood, typically have lower adoption rates given that they\u2019re not integrated into workers\u2019 day-to-day tools, there are a number of startups with a similar approach to Ambr. These include Humu, which uses nudges to encourage behavioral changes, though it\u2019s not specifically focused on countering burnout. And then there is Quan, which issues well-being recommendations to users based on self-reported assessments.<\/p>\n Ambr\u2019s closed beta went live in June this year, and it said that it has been gradually onboarding new customers from its waitlist, including startups and \u201clater-stage growth companies\u201d globally. It expects to launch publicly in early 2023.<\/p>\n In terms of pricing, Ambr is pursuing a standard SaaS model with customers paying a monthly per-employee fee.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Worker burnout is real. Reports suggest that work-related chronic stress could be costing businesses up to $190 billion annually in reduced output and sick days, not to mention the much-discussed \u201cGreat Resignation\u201d where workers are jumping ship in search of a greater work-life balance. In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared burnout an \u201coccupational […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1230128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1230126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrity-gossip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1230126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1230126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1230126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1230126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/gp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Screenshot-2022-10-18-at-10.40.00.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/gp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Screenshot-2022-10-18-at-10.44.43.png\")
<\/p>\n\u201cNudges, not nags\u201d<\/h2>\n