Atlanta Startup Creates App To Make People Hate Work Less INTERVIEW

A new startup in Atlanta called WorkityWork has set out on an ambitious goal of making people hate work less. While many actually like their jobs, there are equally as many who don’t like their jobs. This is what WorkityWork is hoping to do.

While we’ve reported on a couple of startups that allow people to give feedback about their workplace and job conditions both by name and anonymously, WorkityWork is about your co-workers. Work Place moral has become a hot space for new startups. We really like the ones that are taking advantage of front facing social media like Kebuki and this one. Although it has equally as silly a name as Kebuki, the idea behind using social media to recognize co-workers can be uplifting.

In fact, while Kebuki is a management tool, one of the key elements is a pat on the back from the manager. WorkityWork’s key element is a pat on the back from co-workers.

When you got that promotion, or came in under budget, your co-workers can send you Kudos. If the entire team hit a sales goal, you or your manager can recognize the entire team. You can even set your mood on WorkityWork using what they call Vibes.

Check out how WorkityWork works, in this video below.

We got a chance to talk with Ashli Norton co-founder of WorkityWork in this interview below the break. And yeah, after watching the video WorkityWork is more of a fun name than a silly one.

What is Workitywork?

Workitywork is a social workplace engagement platform that helps teams share feedback and give recognition the fun way in real-time. With Workitywork team members can give each other kudos, brag on their own great work, share honest feedback with anonymous polls, and let the boss know the vibe in the office at all times.

Basically, we’re trying to make the case of the Monday’s old news.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Patrick Chukwura and Ashli Norton are behind Workitywork. They began working together on various projects in the tech world after forming their friendship in high school.

Patrick is a self-taught programmer that has been coding since he was 13 years old. He began programming after learning about all of the chaos he could cause in the AOL chatrooms with bots. He wanted to know more about what made everything work, picked up Perl as his first programming language, and has been in love with coding ever since.

Ashli is a natural entrepreneur and has always been from her days of getting in trouble for selling candy and CDs out of her backpack throughout her school days. Fortunately enough, she’s been able to hone her entrepreneurship skills into creating solutions in the tech sector by co-founding a software firm and mobile game company over the years.

Where are you based?

Atlanta, GA

What is the problem that Workitywork solves?

Workitywork solves a problem that most business don’t realize they have, an unhappy employee problem.

Think about it. Companies don’t notice an employee is unhappy usually until they storm out the door or call in “sick” a little too frequently and how would they know. Employees don’t usually discuss their unhappiness with their employers, it’s uncomfortable and people are just unwilling and afraid to do so.

We want to give companies the power to not only know how happy the team is at all times, but be able to do something about it. Businesses have all types of other real-time business metrics, with Workitywork now they can have metrics on their employees’ happiness.

What is your secret sauce?

Our secret sauce is our focus on the happy office and employees versus employee productivity and employee engagement. Even though our app helps improve both, our app focuses on the people on the team, not the output of the team.

What’s next for Workitywork?

After a successful private beta with over 1,000 signups Workitywork is finally going to be launched in public beta. It’s so exciting! Now everyone will have the chance to work in a happy office.

Linkage:

Find out more about WorkityWork here

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