Marin County employee feedback tech startup Waggl acquired by Southern California firm

Waggl in its seven-year history has attracted big names in health care, manufacturing and communications as users of its software designed to help workers be heard on company solutions. Now, a Southern California has liked what it’s heard so much it bought the company.

Perceptyx, an 18-year-old firm that calls itself an “employee listening and people analytics platform,” purchased the Sausalito-based company along with CultureIQ, a Chicago-area firm that uses research to assess company culture for problems. The price wasn’t disclosed.

Temecula-based Perceptyx said these two acquisitions are key to helping employers get “even more of the dynamic feedback they need to meet post-pandemic employee expectations,” according to the deal announcement. The company said the new additions will help the company with “continuous listening capabilities” and expansion of U.S. and Europe market share, particularly with larger employers.

Michael Papay, CEO of Waggl, said Perceptyx can take this tech to a wider audience.

“By combining our crowdsourcing capabilities with Perceptyx’s reach, we can accelerate our mission to give every employee a voice to make their workplace better,” he said in the news release.

Waggl placed twice on Inc. magazine’s list of the top 5,000 fast-growing U.S. independent companies. Waggl ranked No. 1,413 last year with 314% revenue growth for 2016–2019, the business magazine’s chief metric, finishing 2019 with nearly $5 million.

Amid interest from companies looking to connect with workers during the pandemic, Waggl had revenue growth of 11% for 2020 and is expecting 20% growth this year, according to a spokesman.

Waggl describes itself as an "employee listening solution with a difference.“ While polls and surveys of employees are standard human resources tools, this company pairs those with crowdsourced input. Workers suggest solutions and vote on those ideas. The goal is dialogue between managers and their teams about important topics that holds managers accountable through follow-up with employees on how well the company responded to their feedback.

The 30-employee company claims that this approach results in up to 20% higher employee engagement.

“Waggl is a uniquely engaging way to elevate the voice of every employee to drive real-time, actionable insight. It truly reflects the way employees want to engage with their employers — it’s simple, spontaneous and social. Integrating Waggl into our platform will give customers a critical new listening post for their employee experience strategies,” said John Borland, CEO of Perceptyx, in the deal announcement.

Waggl has roughly 150 customers, including large organizations in health care, manufacturing and communications: 3M, BJC Healthcare, Frontier Communications, Paychex and UCHealth. One customer, a global beverage company, is said to have used the system to get input from about 270,000 employees on productivity problems.

CultureIQ offers its Culture Framework, designed to help organizations pinpoint their cultural strengths and weaknesses and align culture with strategy. CultureIQ’s customers span technology, retail and financial services sectors in both the US and Europe.

Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construction and real estate. Before the Business Journal, he wrote for Bay City News Service in San Francisco. He has a degree from Walla Walla University. Reach him at jquackenbush@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4256.

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