Your business, by definition, is the flow of productive output in exchange for revenue. Products go out. Services are conducted. Money comes in, people get paid. Simple, right? Well, it’s a little more complicated. Behind every product, service, idea or sale you make is your company’s greatest asset - its people. But in order to do great work, employees need more than just a paycheck.
Your ability to Find, Inspire, Grow and Retain talent will directly impact performance and profitability.
The story: let’s start from the beginning
Our story starts with Nic and I, two former members of the IT team at Randstad, where we were working on implementing HR tech and analytics solutions. Our goal? To make the HR process more cost-effective and more beneficial for both clients and staff.
Working with inspiring people in HR tech gave us a new way to look at the world of talent management. This made us wonder: If we can use tech to make our own HR tasks quicker, cheaper, and better for our employees, could we do the same for other companies?
The project completed and 5 years later, despite both of us having moved on from Randstad, the idea and the urge still remained.
In 2020, we grabbed the opportunity to join a startup accelerator. Even though our current business wasn't formed yet, we were still drawn to the concept that for a business to succeed, its employees need to thrive as well.
In our past corporate jobs, we saw skilled people feel like they had to leave their jobs to advance their careers. At the same time, our friends in recruitment had a hard time filling open positions and finding people for new projects. The impact of this was clear:
- A continuous loss of key personnel,
- An increasing financial burden,
- The loss of leadership pipeline, and
- Though difficult to quantify, a significant loss of client and staff morale, as they were constantly losing trusted contacts and colleagues.
The problem: A lack of internal mobility
As part of our startup journey, we quickly realized that so many recruiting and HR teams, especially those with more than 500 employees, had better access to data about external candidates than their own people and so turned to the external market every time a new job or project opened. It wasn’t that anyone had anything against internal mobility. After all, we had access to enough employee engagement data to show employees and hiring managers actually craved it. It was simply that hiring teams had no way to effectively identify and tap internal talent on the shoulder. It was this very problem that gave rise to a key question that has since formed the foundational mission of our company:
How do we connect the dots between what people want and what companies need?
The solution: GoFIGR (previously Flow Of Work)
Prompted by this problem, Nic, I, and the rest of our talented team, are proud to have developed an HR tech platform that empowers and encourages employees to share their career aspirations and explore available internal opportunities that will help them build their skills, network and experience.
The rationale was simple: if employee career aspirations were able to align with business goals, everyone wins.
How the brand name was developed
As our company grew and we looked to expand to the US, it soon became clear that the name Flow of Work didn’t clearly align with our vision and we were being mistaken for a workflow management tool! To address this, we went back to the drawing board and after many iterations, our talented designer Steph came up with the name GoFIGR. This name represents our core tenants when it comes to internal talent:
- Find
- Inspire
- Grow
- Retain.
“Find” and “Retain” speak to our employer audience, while nestled in between, “Inspire” and “Grow” resonate strongly with our employee audience. Of course, we still love the concept of the state of flow, but we're proud of what our new name in GoFIGR represents. It emphasizes that our internal talent marketplace has been designed to work for everyone involved – both employers AND employees.
What can GoFiGR do for your business?
Ask yourself: are we confident we have the skills for our business to succeed and is this a great place for employees to grow their career? If the answer is no, it’s time to put an end to the constant revolving door of talent and start connecting your people’s career aspirations with your future business goals. It’s time to consider GoFIGR.
GoFIGR is a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform designed to collect and intuitively analyze employee skill and business requirement insights so you can supercharge your talent retention and organizational development process in line with company goals. With valuable insights collected from your team, GoFIGR allows you to:
- identify your employees’ current skill sets
- align them with your business goals
- realize your team’s full potential
- reduce the cost of recruitment
- increase retention by upskilling from within
Most importantly, GoFIGR empowers you to nurture the skills and talent that your organization needs to thrive.
Your future team is already working for you.
Don’t let that talent go to waste – give your people the opportunity to grow their career AND drive your business into its tomorrow. It’s the ultimate way to retain staff, foster a progressive internal culture and minimize the costs of repetitive recruitment.
Contact GoFIGR today to discover how we can help you to foster a future-focused workforce using our internal talent marketplace.
Helena Turpin spent 20 years in talent and HR innovation where she solved people-related problems using data and technology. She left corporate life to create GoFIGR where she helps mid-sized organizations to develop and retain their people by connecting employee skills and aspirations to internal opportunities like projects, mentorship and learning.
