Bristol-based start-up OurPeople, which has built a team communication and engagement platform for deskless workers, has raised $2m (£1.61m) in funding.
Leading the Series A round is Alpine Meridian, a New York-based investment firm specialising in digital media, e-commerce and healthcare, along with entrepreneur Robert Neveu, who has joined OurPeople as managing partner. It brings OurPeople’s total funding to $3m. 
Founded in 2016 by former part-time lifeguard and swimming teacher Ross McCaw, OurPeople offers a secure mobile platform to let businesses communicate digitally with employees, ensuring teams can stay connected.
It primarily works in industries with large numbers of deskless workers, such as fitness and leisure.
Clients include premiership football club West Ham’s charity foundation, Virgin Active UK, theme park Paulton’s Park and Serco Leisure.
Ross McCaw, pictured, previously founded CoursePro to improve the way swimming lessons were administered in the UK and other countries. By the time the company was fully acquired by Jonas Software in 2014, more than 1m swimmers had enrolled.
After that success, he spotted another opportunity and launched OurPeople.
“I saw first-hand how companies struggled to communicate with their employees,” he said. 
“Specifically, their remote, deskless team members who, more often than not, do not have access to a company email but who are the people with the most direct exposure to their customers.”
He noticed how many trainers were not engaging with company news and announcements. “This was bad for both the company and them. I looked at a number of other sectors and saw that this was a wider issue among many industries with high numbers of deskless workers,” he said.
He describes the OurPeople solution as a “highly sophisticated yet simple to use” messaging service that ensures the right people in an organisation receive the information they need when they need it.
This and the fact that the communication platform is mobile-first sets it apart from competitors.
“Generally, our competitors come in one of two categories: the workplace social network or the consumer-style workplace chat groups. Both, in our opinion, create too much noise and chatter. They are not targeted enough,” he said.
“Employees want to see content that is relevant to them and incredibly quick to read or watch. The employer, on the other hand, wants to know that the communication has been seen and acknowledged. To achieve this we have a ‘tagging’ system so that only the people that absolutely need to see that message receive it.”
He said OurPeople, based in Colston Tower, was different because it was not trying to create a workplace social network ‘where vital information can get lost in all the typical noise’.
“OurPeople is about crucial, relevant information at the right time that engages those hard to reach employees and won’t slow them down as they carry out their customer-facing duties. We make internal communications, especially with remote and deskless colleagues, effective and efficient.”
