Even before they began to graduate from college, millennials drove changes at work, from management and recruiting practices to the design of office interiors. But companies are still adapting and figuring out what matters most to this large demographic and employee base.
Now, a tech startup called Zugata has raised $7 million in Series A venture funding to replace the crusty old performance review with something more motivating to this group than a twice-a-year, managerial write-up.
Investors in Zugata’s new round included Canaan Partners, General Catalyst andRedpoint Ventures.
Founded in 2014, Palo Alto-based Zugata developed software as a service that automatically figures out who employees work with most, and then helps them gather feedback from each other, directly, without managers or HR departments eavesdropping.
Companies that use Zugata can set a policy so that employees may exchange feedback either anonymously, or with their names attached.
Zugata shows users a set of skills that a colleague should have mastered, based on their functional role. For each skill, a user marks it as strength or not yet a strength.
The employer cannot access messages exchanged, not through their HR department, IT or any other division. If court orders (or some other situation) required messages between employees to be disclosed such requests would be handled by Zugata.
Zugata CEO and cofounder Srinivas Krishnamurti explained that providing employees with a private, but official, means of exchanging feedback decouples professional development and performance goal-setting from salary and promotion decisions.