Trickle secure investment

Founded in Edinburgh in 2018, Trickle aims to drive improved people engagement for large corporates and SMEs across their organisations. Trickle launched into the UK market earlier this year and is already winning business across the commercial and public sectors, with recent client wins and assignments including Scottish Power, the Scottish Government, Disclosure Scotland and more.

Trickle’s technology platform features an analytics dashboard which highlights the top-five issues or suggestions from employees, called “trickles”, so a company’s senior management and HR function know where to focus their attention.

Industry research regularly points to a positive work culture, where people feel listened to and valued, translating to a significant competitive advantage for high-performing organisations.

CEO and co-founder Paul Reid previously founded geospatial solutions specialist Sigma Seven, which was acquired by FTSE 100 business outsourcing giant Capita plc in 2015. Reid brought in some of the Sigma Seven team to launch Trickle, including co-founder Ross Dempster, who is Trickle’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

A number of angel investors who had previously backed Sigma Seven, along with Techstart Ventures, have supported Trickle with seed funding of almost £1m.

Trickle CEO and co-founder, Paul Reid, said: “When Sigma Seven was acquired by one of the UK’s largest companies, I saw first-hand how corporate culture can impact people and I was always thinking about how I had to feed or trickle my team’s sentiments back to the new management. With Trickle, we’ve built a people-first technology platform so that a conduit exists to channel employee issues and suggestions to senior management and HR. The end result is a virtuous circle that helps people feel more valued within the organisations we’re partnering with.”

While Trickle is working alongside large national and international companies, some of whom are going through or have gone through restructuring or transformational change, the SME market is also proving to be a fast-growing segment for the team. For SMEs areas like staff attraction and retention, employer brand and growth phases can have the same kind of seismic impact experienced by much larger companies.

Trickle’s Chief Operating Officer (COO), Marcella Peacock, said: “Studies show that a happily employed person is more than twice as productive as a satisfied one and more than three times as productive as a dissatisfied person at work. Today’s startups are thinking more about culture than ever before from day one. For the more established organisations, they realise that in today’s corporate world, putting real focus on engaging your workforce results in higher productivity, increased loyalty and reduced staff churn.”

Trickle plans to grow headcount from six to 10 over the next twelve months.