Mello - Reduce employee burnout
Automated weekly checkins to prevent employee burnout before it even happens
I discover a new startup every week and share it with you. This week’s featured startup is Mello. Subscribe to get each and every issue.
What it does: Mello is a tool that checks in with your team weekly through your internal communications tool (Slack, MS Teams, Google Chat), asking scientifically backed questions (tested with over 10,000 respondents) to assess employee wellbeing in advance and prevent employees from burning out before it happens.
How it started: CG Chen (CEO), Geordie Graham (CPO), Derek Zhang (CFO) and Alex Zvaniga (CTO) were all working as co-founders on their previous startup Ample Labs and found themselves burning out when working on it. They looked for solutions but couldn’t find anything that was easy, integrated into their workflow and provided them with insights and action they could take.
They then found that their customers and partners were struggling with the same
thing. That led them to founding Mello and wanting to build a simple and seamless way for employees to know how burnt-out they are and take action immediately. They discovered that turnover is costing American companies nearly $11 billion per year and 50% of that is voluntary churn which can be attributed to employee burnout.
How it works: Mello sends a weekly survey with scientifically backed questions through an integration through your internal communications tool. At the end of the check-in each employee gets a burnout score, why they have that score and smart nudges on how to improve their wellbeing and workplace happiness. This is where companies can insert their health benefits into Mello as well. On the company side, HR, managers, and executives can track how employees are doing on an aggregate and individual level, so they can take data driven action to improve culture and retain employees. Unlike bi-annual surveys or pulse-surveys that lead to ad-hoc actions, Mello empowers employees with their own data, and incentivizes them with perks and benefits to keep them engaged, all the while keeping HR informed on team wellbeing.
Why it’s interesting: Burnout has always been a serious workplace problem that has not always been taken seriously. The pandemic has really highlighted mental health problems and I’m glad to see that there are startups like Mello tackling this problem but also quantifying how much it costs for the business (they have a handy calculator on their website that estimates how many employees will experience burnout and how much that will cost your business). As a business, offering mental health solutions is becoming a core benefit to keep your employees happy, engaged and satisfied and Mello is fitting that bill perfectly.
