Worker engagement and communication platform Sense raises $16M

Sense, an AI-powered worker engagement and communication platform backed by Alphabet’s venture capital arm GV, has raised $16 million in a series C round of funding.

The raise comes as the San Francisco-based enterprise reports demand for its platform has “doubled” more than the previous year, with organizations rethinking their hiring and engagement philosophies to stand out amongst the competitors.

“Traditionally, companies in the highly-skilled, knowledge worker sectors used to face challenges in finding the right candidates,” Sense cofounder and CEO Anil Dharni told VentureBeat. “Today, there is a famine of candidates regardless of the sector. Sectors such as retail, hospitality, and healthcare are struggling to attract and engage with candidates.”

Working capital

Founded in 2015, Sense aids recruiters and staffing agencies broadcast messages to workers, providing crucial data on new assignments or requesting feedback. According to Dharni, Sense can decrease the time-to-employ figure by involving 40-80%, as a result lowering the price and “improving the quality of candidate experience” for organizations of all sizes.

Through its message studio, HR can send messages and reminders, dispatch surveys, and automate all of this by setting up filters and triggers about crucial events such as the day just before a worker is schedule to becoming a new job. An integrated chatbot permits them to engage with workers just before, throughout, and just after a gig has completed, supplying them with crucial data and even fielding queries.

A core element of the Sense platform is its analytics, which enables organizations to track worker engagement and satisfaction, with stats about message delivery and open prices, chatbot metrics, hyperlink clicks, and more.

The Amazon aspect

While Sense was as soon as focused exclusively on contractors, it has extended into the broader complete-time workforce via targeting industries such as retail, hospitality, logistics, and warehousing. So this indicates that as effectively as working in the previous with massive-name staffing agencies such as Adecco and Apex Systems, Sense now claims retail heavyweights such as Amazon and Sears amongst its client base.

“Over time, we have discovered that the problems of finding great people and retaining them exists both in the contractor / temp worker front as well as in full-time workers,” Dharni mentioned. “On the general employees side, Sense focuses on companies that have high volume hiring and have a large number of full-time hourly workers. Similar to temporary workers, talent in these industries have high candidate drop-off rates and worker attrition.”

Prior to now, Sense had raised about $23.5 million, such as its GV-led series B round of funding two years ago. With its most current money injection, which saw GV return alongside Avataar Venture Partners and Accel, the enterprise is now effectively-financed to serve its expanding array of enterprise shoppers.

“Enterprises are realizing that there aren’t enough workers for them to attract and are having to rethink the way they hire,” Dharni  mentioned. “Speed to hire, while lowering the cost of acquisition, has become the number one priority for all enterprises.”

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz