Aussie Rules! Julian Cook is not your typical HR person, and Howamigoing is not your typical performance management software. To truly understand this new platform, designed to enhance a business’ culture of feedback and employee engagement, we have to take a trip Down Under.
Julian experienced a lot of ‘feedback’ whilst growing up in his Australian Outback hometown. He knew where he stood with, almost everyone in town. However, this self-confessed Maths geek, with a degree in Pure Mathematics and Statistics, experienced a vacuum of feedback when he entered the Sydney and then London Corporate Finance worlds of Goldman Sachs and later J.P. Morgan. Despite the stakes being high and employee turnover even higher, he noted that real-time praise and constructive advice was not forthcoming. Performance opinions were withheld in face-to-face conversations and there was no online solution for gathering regular, honest advice.
After a career in Mergers and Acquisitions, Julian brought his Aussie nous to the problem with a piece of software bearing a very Aussie name – ‘Howamigoing’.
How does it work?
In conjunction with co-founder Kim Monney (ex-Just Eat, Gett and Tesco.com), Julian launched Howamigoing in 2018 after a year of bootstrapped testing with a few small businesses in the UK and Australia. It is a performance management product designed to have the most aesthetically pleasing and engaging user interface. It is in fact the first of its kind to be designed ‘employee first’, to make people feel safe and excited to log in and surface the words that otherwise go unsaid. The key outcomes of having an entire workforce engaged in the process of regular recognition and advice are more profitable front office employees and lower staff turnover.
Any employee can gather advice on the platform at any time, on any topic. Early customer interviews revealed that one of biggest blockers for employees in proactively soliciting feedback was ‘not being sure what questions to ask’. Soon after, Julian and Kim teamed up with Prof Samuel A Culbert of UCLA and Dr Anna Janssen to prepare a best-practice ‘question library’, which has dramatically increased the number of employees with feedback, a key metric that is tracked in the Howamigoing platform.
Two recently launched features have garnered additional attention over the last six months: Good vibes and Ask me anything. With employees feeling more disconnected than ever from leadership, these two tools work together to bridge that gap. Ask me anything allows anybody to send an anonymous question to management, making it safe to surface ideas, queries or concerns. Good vibes uses public praise to reinforce positive behaviour, boosting morale and motivation.
The pricing model is uniquely simple, transparent, cost-effective and supported by a helpful FAQ page.
As an additional offering, Howamigoing provides online step-by-step guides for simple, scalable and science-backed feedback cultures, to unleash a team’s potential to reap greater productivity and profitability.
How is it going?
Development fundraising has proved very successful, raising over £1.5 million, and boasts Angel investors including the Chief of Staff to Australia’s former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, as well as investment from British Business Bank’s Future Fund. Accolades are already flowing in for Julian and the team, having been accepted into the Ignite Accelerator in 2019, awarded top HR Tech Solution Provider in Europe for 2019/20 by HR Tech Outlook, and ranked #21 in the UK Startups 100 list in 2020, having risen from #61 the year before.
Howamigoing is already embedded in over 200 SMEs globally, including Asia Miles – a Cathay Pacific group company. ‘Howmies’ are located in the UK, Europe, and more recently Australasia, which has led to the platform being used by Australia’s Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO).
Where are they going?
Julian, Kim and the team have a lot lined up for 2021 already, in what is a period of evolution for HR due to an accelerated adoption of remote working practices caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The first half of the year promises various integrations and partnerships, including a tie-up German HR management platform Personio, who recently raised $125m at a $1.7bn valuation. Following that will be unique Machine Learning applications to be added to the foundational platform, allowing HR and Business Leaders to draw actionable insights from large swathes of qualitative feedback data. A Sales team is now in place to support the growing interest from medium-sized businesses and teams are in place in New Zealand for customer support in Asia Pacific.
Howamigoing has come a long way since the Australian Outback and promises to offer a great deal going forward in 2021 and beyond. But most importantly, just like life in small Aussie towns, Julian and his team promise to ‘keep things simple’.
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