Tackling workplace productivity and wellbeing, Bessern is a social enterprise that focuses on mental health.
Meet Elena Agaragimova and Ivan Palomino, who came together to create a platform that measures and improves staff performance and also their well-being. They were inspired by their own work experiences to build a solution for a problem they believed was barely identified, and inadequately addressed.
Here’s their story as related by Ivan…
“Elena Agaragimova, worked in Higher Education. She is a specialist on Talent Development and a recognized speaker on the Future of Learning. I am a tech entrepreneur, ex-corporate strategist and passionate neuroscience practitioner.
“Five years ago, we developed a strong friendship, while realizing our complementarity and solidifying our sense of purpose: to transform how organizations learn and thrive in the Middle East.
“If you think about it, organizations are constantly raising the bar of success, providing value to millions of their customers, aiming for products of unimaginable low cost, convenience, and creativity. What is less evident is that behind each success story are the people, the workforce.
“Many are thriving while others are silently coping with stress – today, as much as 45% of employees suffer from office stress. Despite being overwhelmed with workload; some try to motivate themselves to attend trainings that may not be as important or relevant.
“Some work in the evening or weekends compensating for what they are not able to get done, but at the cost of their private and family lives. There are those who stare at their computer screens without doing any real work simply due to exhaustion and lack of regular sleep.
“We found out that according to the World Health Organization, Mental Health has become a pandemic with financial consequences for corporations that includes absenteeism due to mental health issues. There’s also “presenteeism”, where individuals choose to attend work despite poor mental health but are unproductive in the work they do, and “leaveism” which is the growing tendency of individuals to be unable to ‘switch off’ from work.
“So at Bessern, we created the first Middle East Tech platform to measure and improve performance and well-being in corporations. It tracks employee learning, encouraging them to practice healthy micro-behaviours, and monitoring their improvements.
“Using our platform organizations can track the overall impact of their investment, reduce costs of learning and development, and nurture an organization that is engaged and productive.
“What we did is to combine technology with behavioural science to allow people to learn and create positive new behaviours. They learn through over 100 topics focused on how to grow mindsets and business performance.
“Staff can work on creating micro-habits that will support their goals, and at any time, they can access a performance coach to drive motivation and offer the individual support”.
Learn more about performance and wellbeing in the workplace here and access free resources on self-development and wellbeing here
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