Interview: Three Management Lessons From the Growth of Perkbox Wednesday 19 September 2018 Share Share to LinkedIn Share to Facebook Share via email Make Rapid Changes. Think of the End User. Obsess About Tech. Insights From One of the Uk’s Fastest-growing Companies Online employee engagement platform Perkbox was recently named among the UK’s fastest-growing tech businesses of 2018. What management lessons can we can learn from its explosive growth? CMI Insights got an exclusive interview with its CEO, Saurav Chopra: 1. Be Brave Enough to Make Changes The first iteration of Perkbox was actually called Huddlebuy and launched in 2011. It enabled small businesses to purchase products and services as a group and benefit from the discounts usually offered to larger retailers. The venture secured backing from some of the tech world’s most notable investors, including the founder and CEO of Zoopla. “An initial funding round raised £350K, but we soon had just three months’ worth of money left in the bank,” admits Chopra. “We decided to change our business model and provide lead generation for companies wanting to target SMEs through innovative social media campaigns.” However, a sense of business purpose was lacking. “It wasn’t fulfilling our passion to make employees and workplaces happier. As a result, we decided to focus on employee engagement,” says Chopra. “Our mission became to ‘help build a better society one relationship at a time’, starting with the workplace.” 2. Think of the End User Employee engagement is a very well-established industry. “We’ve come in and created a different way of looking at it,” says Chopra. Read more: How to devise a great benefits package Perkbox partners with business owners, HR departments and decision makers, but it does this through a B2C brand so it can connect directly with users. “We’ve positioned Perkbox as an exciting brand, one that employees look forward to using. This is really important to our growth,” says Chopra. 3. Focus on Tech What does it take to be a market leader? Chopra believes it’s all about technological capability. Perkbox recently hired its first chief technology officer, Paul Schultz, ex-head of mobile at Yahoo. His brief? Strategy, platform architecture and global engineering roadmaps. Chopra believes the key to employee engagement is accessibility. “Paul will complete Perkbox’s transformation into a mobile-first platform delivering amazing user experiences for employees and HR teams. “The aim is to serve ten million employees by 2020,” he adds. “In this last quarter, we’ve worked particularly hard to expand our tech team. It’s now doubled in size in just over three months.” Like this article? Why not share it. Share to LinkedIn Share to Facebook Share via email Topic: Highlights – 9 July Psychological safety first: how culture can strengthen defences, teams and the future Read article Article Topic: Productivity Be careful not to misuse the term ‘workaholic’ The difference between work-life integration and workaholism must be identified Read article Article Topic: Workplace Culture Cyber attacks: Don’t point the finger Good managers make people feel comfortable to report when they click on a malicious link Read article Article Topic: Equality and Diversity Six tips to make team members feel included At a recent CMI webinar, a group of experts shared the one management intervention that made colleagues feel included Read article Article Interview At CMI, we’re hugely privileged to have contributed to many people’s management and leadership journeys. Take a look back at some of the people we’ve interviewed for some top tips and exclusive insight. Members See More CMI Members have access to thousands of online learning and CPD resources. Learn more about our membership benefits Join The Community CMI offers a variety of flexible membership solutions, tailored to your needs. Find out more and get involved in the CMI community today.