Halifax Startup Launches Emotional Well-Being Tool Being Used By NHL Team
HALIFAX – We have all been there before in our professional lives: working a job where we feel more like a machine for the company than a human being with thoughts, emotions, and opinions; a job where the higher-ups care only about performance outcomes above all else. Now, two Halifax entrepreneurs have launched a startup company looking to change all that.
Bryce Tully and Michael Bawol have recently launched Innerlogic, which operates a web application that tracks employees’ emotional wellbeing in the workplace. The app can track complex dynamics like team trust, team communication, and team alignment.
“We just noticed a lack of good information and a lack of good tracking and management in the more dynamic and emotion spaces on teams,” says Tully.
“When we consulted with a lot of different teams, we realized that the ability to share how people are feeling, it kind of goes uncovered – and nobody devotes any time to these things,” added Bawol. “It kind of takes the human element out of the work environment.”
Tully and Bawol both have backgrounds in sports science; Tully having a sports psychology degree from Dalhousie University, and Bawol being a sports data analyst. With their talents combined, they realized they can track the complex nature of emotions amongst teams and employees.
“We took a big risk; we quit our jobs as sports scientists to pursue this particular dream,” says Bawol. “We feel there’s a missing link out there.”
“There’s a greater need to care for your team members. You’re not just an employee doing work, you’re a human being with a lot of emotions. And this is important to consider when you’re trying to achieve something great.”
The duo noticed that a lot of employee tests focused on just one emotion: stress. And they were often asked to rate their stress on a scale of 1 to 10. These tests are not a good indicator of the complex feelings coursing through an entire team.
“Stress is just one small aspect of the bigger emotional experiences spectrum,” explained Tully. “And we’re really doing people a disservice by presenting them with the same emotion every day, and tricking people into thinking that it’s really just stress that you’re feeling.”
“(With our tool) People are actually able to select exactly the emotions that describe how they’re feeling, rather than rating on a number scale how much of something they’re feeling… we can start to make predictions about how a team is going to function because of that specific constellation of emotions.”
The Innerlogic application launched in March and, so far, 10 organizations have signed on, ranging from non-profits to corporate clients. Most interesting of all, however, is that an NHL team is using the application for their staff. (Despite eager questioning from this hockey fan, Tully and Bawol said they can’t give away the name of the team).
But what should a company do with the information they receive on their employees’ emotional state? Tully and Bawol say if an employer needs help with processing the information, Innerlogic can give some coaching.
But Innerlogic has found that workers who use the app are seeing positive results by feeling free to express their emotions.
“And what we’ve found in organizations, if they use this tool week after week, is people start to get along better,” says Bawol. “They start to connect better, and they start to understand each other better.”
Innerlogic is also hoping that this application will help people get past misconceptions about emotions. Many people don’t want to openly share emotions that are considered “negative,” especially in a work environment.
“Alright, your team members are feeling angry. What does anger mean in the context of the workplace?” asked Bawol
“I think anger can be perceived as a negative emotion. What we’re trying to do is normalize these things, take the negativity out of it, and look at it for the signal that it is.”
As for Tully, he hasn’t completely left the field of sports psychology. He is still the mental performance coach for Canada’s women’s national basketball team. He is preparing to enter a three-month bubble to join the team at the Tokyo Olympics.