Welcome to the Workspace Connect Wrap, your regular roundup of news and analysis examining the modern workplace. In today's edition: We look at a pair of funding announcements from two HR software providers: Pando and Claira.
Pando Aims to Tackle Career Progression
Pando, a start-up that provides a platform for employees to set and track career goals,
announced that it has raised $6.9 million in a round of funding, led by Craft Ventures and with participation from Lerer Hippeau, GFC, Correlation Ventures, and other individual investors.
HR professionals can use Pando to create individualized career progression plans with job function-specific templates for their employees. Other features of the Pando platform include tools to set and track career goals and provide employee feedback, and the platform can be integrated into 17 different human resources information systems, as
Pando shared on its website. Additionally, employees can track and log their personal achievements. With the recent funding, Pando plans to expand its engineering team and build out its go-to-market strategy.
"Companies have endless resources to manage their business needs — finance dashboards, sales reporting, and even bug ticketing. But when it comes to a company's most valuable asset — its people — employers lack the tools to help their people progress in real-time," said Caitlin Strandberg, partner at Lerer Hippeau. "Pando shifts the performance management paradigm to focus on just-in-time progression, contributing hugely to engagement and retention."
Claira Raises Funds for Workforce Capability Management Platform
This week, Competency analytics provider
Claira announced that it raised $3.5 million in seed funding in a round led by Heartland Ventures and with participation from Trend Forward Capital, Connetic Ventures, Invest Detroit Ventures, and Northern Michigan Angels.
With Claria, workplaces can map their internal workforce capabilities through competency balance sheets, which provide insight on an organization's existing competencies. With this information, workplaces can find areas they lack competency in and devise ways to address it through upskilling and hiring. Additionally, workplaces can embed Claira's confidence API into the webpage that hosts job openings, which will then provide a "match score" for each applicant based on how well their competencies fit the position,
Claira shared on its website. The latest funding will go to advancing its machine learning capabilities and improving the rollout to key customer segments.
"Long-term labor challenges are forcing businesses to rethink their workforces. Claira provides a solution by enabling employers to identify and unlock their employees' hidden talent. Whether it's the fact that Jane in accounting speaks fluent Spanish or Joe in customer service knows how to weld, Claira shows managers stressed for capacity the internal resources to get the job done today," Conor McGuinness, partner at Heartland Ventures said.