Tech For Good feat. Loopin

We recently caught up with Antony Thompson the Co-Founder of Loopin, helping to bring your team’s wellbeing and insights together, to gain clarity and achieve your goals—all from a single platform.

The purpose of the Tech For Good series of interviews is to create a platform that showcases and champions companies, products and technologists who are using technology as a force for positive change in the world.

Sky @ ADLIB: Can you please introduce yourself, what your business does and what makes your business and offering unique and a force for Good?

Antony: Hi, I’m Antony, co-founder of Loopin.

Loopin is a hub designed to support the wellbeing and development of young professionals through social connection.

Through Loopin, employees can talk openly in a safe, supportive space about their mental health and wellbeing. Encouraging deeper awareness across the team, which in turn informs multiple insights for managers/ department leads/ c-suite, with action driven messages to those stakeholders.

Each morning, employees complete a quick and simple three step check-in. Whether checking in openly or privately, data from this check-in gives team leaders real-time insights that go deeper than traditional employee surveys. The problem with traditional employee surveys? They’re impersonal, generic, and way too infrequent. Wellbeing is personal to everyone and we all know this can change daily.

Using predictive analytics, we alert managers if teams are heading towards burnout or trending upwards in engagement, helping them target their efforts where it’s most needed and supporting them with a consistent and emotionally intelligent approach to leadership development.

We’re on a mission to make people feel more human at work, where taboo topics around mental health are broken down, and we move to a more supportive, open, connected culture.

Sky @ ADLIB: Can you share the story behind the origin of your business and Service / Product?

Antony: Having served 10 years in the Royal Marines, leading people in some seriously testing circumstances, my business partner and I wanted to bring the core principles and values of Royal Marines leadership to the ‘real’ world, in particular, to today’s hybrid world.

Operating in austere and often demanding situations there were certain elements that ensured mission success, however, amongst the training, orders and discipline. There was one thing paramount, and it sat above all the rest. Trust. Without it, operational effectiveness, and lives were at risk. The same now, can also be said for the working world.

Moving to hybrid working has been a great opportunity for so many people to have a better work-life balance and more opportunities. But even with intelligent communication tools like Slack, feelings of disconnection, stress, and isolation are higher than ever before.

Now, businesses must prioritise employee wellbeing way beyond tick-the-box activities and understand critical warning signs that don’t appear on traditional employee surveys or KPI reports.

So, with core values from the Royal Marines, and the most talented group of achievers, we created Loopin.

Sky @ ADLIB: Can you share some tech challenges or barriers you had to overcome to create a Product / Service offering with potential, whilst remaining ‘for good’?

Antony: The list is endless, yet we set out some core values we will never drift away from. Those include: data security – we will never sell a companies data to anyone else; provide value – if we are in doubt of not adding value, we will tell you; high standards – ensure we are holding ourselves accountable to industry and ethical standards.

Several of the biggest challenges have actually come in the form of being able to communicate precisely exactly what we are, and what we are doing. A number of reasons have factored into this – ultimately trying to create something out of nothing and trying to make it fit to the market is always difficult. Not giving up and finding ways to keep going (financially) are the hardest challenges.

Sky @ ADLIB: Why do you think is it a growing trend for tech professionals to seek out opportunities to work in purpose-driven businesses?

Antony: With a new generation of tech professionals coming through, people want to do work that truly makes a difference. It’s no longer about going to work to pay the bills and just getting by.

We strongly believe in the narrative of ‘its ok to not be ok’ and ‘just talk’ yet still, we find ourselves in a place beyond where we should be able to do something about it. We need a prevention is better than cure culture, not slap a plaster on the problem after and hope it sticks.

Any business being created today, needs to be thinking 5 to 10 years ahead of itself, its about sustainability, in every aspect. We had a saying in the Marines “Live fast, die fast” – in essence it meant, if you rush and override it with noise you fail, but do the basics well and smoothly, the mission will succeed,

People want to see that the work they’re doing is not just contributing to the company’s North Star, but the bigger picture, and wider community.

For our team, when we hear stories of how Loopin is enabling young people to have more open and frank conversations about mental health and wellbeing, we couldn’t be prouder. It gives us all such a boost in the office and you can literally see the team’s morale being impacted, knowing the work they’re doing is a force for good. Here’s our most recent social media post we’ve been tagged in:

“For someone who’s always had difficulty expressing my emotions to others and tends to suffer in silence. This has made my life so much easier.”

Sky @ ADLIB: What has been the key thing you’ve learned about ‘tech for good’ and your target audience specifically?

Antony: We’ve learned that there’s a new generation of young professionals who are bravely willing to talk about their mental health and express their feelings. Until Loopin, there wasn’t a safe space to do that.

They are an emotionally intelligent generation of people who know the importance of speaking up and asking for help. It’s so inspiring to see this come through in the daily check-ins, social media posts we’re tagged in, and the response to events and webinars we’re involved with.

As these young professionals step into management roles and lead their own teams of people, they’re looking for a consistent and supportive approach to their own wellbeing, as well as the wellbeing of their peers and wider team too.

We absolutely believe Loopin can be the guiding light in the domain. Not subjectively, but objectively giving the right action to the right person, based on experience from the Royal Marines and the heavy soak of continual scientific research into the platform.