Improving Employee Happiness with Martin Blinder, Tictrac

Bill Banham's guest today is Martin Blinder, Founder and CEO at Tictrac, a leading Digital Health platform that empowers people through their data.

Martin has been named among the 15 most influential in Digital Health, and he's been featured in Wired, NYT, BBC, CNBC, Fortune, Mashable, the Wall Street Journal, and many other media outlets.

Questions For Martin Include:

• How can wellbeing technologies help employers to better identify employee needs? 
• How can wellbeing tech like Tictrac help to improve employee happiness and, therefore, productivity levels? 
• A study by Officevibe found that 70% of employees say that friendship at work is the most important element to a happy work-life, while analysis by Gallup found that employees are 50% more likely to report high social wellness if they have a best friend at work. It is generally considered that there are four pillars of wellness – physical, mental, financial and social. While the first three are often focused on within a work context, the last should not be underestimated. Why does social wellbeing need to become a top concern for employers? 
• You founded Tictrac back in 2011. The wellbeing market seems to have been growing rapidly over the last few years, from a Tictrac perspective, what are the themes and trends you have been seeing?
• Let's talk about the recent announcement of Dialogue and Tictrac coming together through an acquisition. What opportunities does Dialogue's acquisition of Tictrac create, and what additional value will a customer likely see?=
• What are your predictions for how the global health and wellbeing space will continue to evolve over the coming few years? 
• Do you believe employee wellness will remain a top priority for organizations and will digital solutions continue to play a role?

About Tictrac

Tictrac is at the forefront of the consumerization of healthcare, centralizing an otherwise fragmented sector around the consumer, with a belief that consumer engagement is the key to better health outcomes. Tictrac won Best New Company at Health 2.0 in 2012 and was recently acquired by leading Virtual Care company, Dialogue.


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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the HR chat podcast, bringing the best of the HR talent and leadership communities to you for more episodes and the latest articles covering what's new in the world of work, visit HR gazette.com subscribe and follow us on social media.

Speaker 2: 0:22

Welcome to another episode of the HR chat show. I'm your host today, bill Banham and joining me today is Martin blender and internet and digital health entrepreneur and founder and CEO over at tick track, a leading digital health platform that empowers people through their data. Martin has been named among the 15 most influential in digital health. And he's been featured in wired N Y T BBC CNBC, fortune Mashable, the wall street journal, and many other media outlets. Although this is his first time on the HR chat pod, uh, tick is at the forefront of the consumerization of healthcare centralizing and otherwise fragmented sector around the consumer. And they have a belief that consumer engagement is the key to better health outcomes, tick track one best new company at health 2.0 in 2012, and was recently acquired by leading virtual care company dialogue. And we're gonna be getting into that today. Listeners Martin. It's my pleasure to welcome you to the show today.

Speaker 3: 1:34

Thanks Phil. Good to be here.

Speaker 2: 1:36

So beyond my reintroduction there, Martin, why don't you start by taking a minute or two and telling our listeners a bit more about yourself?

Speaker 3: 1:43

So I'm Martin blender. Uh, one of the founder CEO of tick track. Um, our goal is really to drive, uh, meaningful behavioral change to everyday people, really bringing health, uh, positive health outcomes to individuals who, uh, either, uh, know they need to change their behaviors or significantly need to course correct in order to live longer and healthier. Doesn't say very much about myself, but you talked a little bit about the mission that we have as a company. And I think as a result, a little bit about my, uh, my goals.

Speaker 2: 2:10

Okay. So you touched upon the mission there, tick track. What about the Genesis? How, how did the company come about in the first place?

Speaker 3: 2:16

So my, my co-founder and I all over McCarthy, we were both, uh, working at a very data driven digital agency back in 20 10, 20 11. Um, and we were connecting a lot of different third party APIs, Expedia, um, uh, Google maps, a lot of the kind of early web 2.0 API services and building new, uh, user experiences leveraging those APIs. And we saw that there was a lot of value in digital footprint that people were leaving behind to better inform those individuals about their day to day lives. Uh, very much. I'm not sure if you recall, there was this whole movement called the quantified self, which was really all, um, a very niche group of individuals, really trying to kind of, um, better understand themselves through their own data. You know, people you could imagine running around with sensors on their temples, trying to track every aspect of their life. The original idea of tic track was really almost a Google analytics for your life, where you could integrate all the different data that you were creating passively through your digital life. Either through walking with a Fitbit, which back then was one of the first kind of wearables to, uh, your social media, uh, your wireless scale, uh, your calendar. There was a lot of data already back then being created. And by integrating through different APIs into a, a visual dashboard, uh, we, we felt we would be able to empower people through their own data. So the very early start of dashboard of your life, that you could, um, configure based on your own lifestyle projects, if it was about your own personal, uh, weight loss journey or managing stress or tracking the development of your kids. Um, what was interesting was that product was really a prototype and we got a pretty large, um, group of beta testers in the early days before we formally launched, we were invited by health 2.0 off the back of some press that we got to present at their annual event in 2012. And we won at their launch event this whole best new company. And so we at, after that, we started getting a lot of interest from insurers, uh, seeing in different types of companies, seeing how they could potentially leverage our platform for their own members and their own customers. And we knew that our, our product, our dashboard was a nice product, but it had a very loyal and very niche following what we didn't really have was a business really on that and wanted to figure out really what is, what is it that we want to be. And so over the next 18 months, we kind of trialed a lot of different things. We worked with many different brands, uh, from red bull where we created athlete dashboards, uh, to, um, I believe Gatorade and PepsiCo around creating also dashboards for some of the athletes that they sponsor, but also working with some of the pharmaceutical companies to help people say with Ms to manage their day to day lives. So we trialed a lot of different things, but we were working very much almost as an agency, um, on top of our platform. Um, and it was only really in 2014 where we won the business of a very large health insurer in the us. And we realized that actually this is the, the, the needs that they have to help support the health and wellness of their members was really the mission that we wanted to, what we felt most passionate about. So we jettisoned all non-core projects in business, which was a bit painful because that was obviously revenue. Um, and we decided to focus on building one core platform, um, dedicated, not exactly to empowering people through their own data, but helping people through their data to live healthier, longer lives. And that was the Genesis of really what tick track today is, um, and what, what we continue to do.

Speaker 2: 5:57

So before we get into the hard hitting questions, I just wanna set a bit more context here at, at a, at a high level, um, with the business case in mind that the first of my two higher level questions, if you like are, how, how can wellbeing technologies help employers identify needs?

Speaker 3: 6:16

There's a number of ways, obviously there's the, these, these technologies are very scalable, right? So you can roll them out very quickly and very swiftly to all your, all your employee base. And one of the benefits of that is that it enables, you know, equity across all of your employees, irrespective of where they are, if they're in front office, or if they're working at, um, in a, uh, at a plant or, or a site, um, you don't need the, the physical intervention or the physical, uh, experience to be able to get value from a digital service. So that enables very quick, uh, deployment, um, and a very scalable at a very scalable and a cost effective way. On the flip side, there's also a lot of data that gets created off the back of utilization, digital services, and that data be seen an aggregated and de-identified way can better inform the HR, um, administrators, the HR directors around the utilization of those services, but also inform other decisions around other products based on what they're seeing of utilization. So a good example, obviously with our platform is, uh, we have a lot of different types of features and content on the platform, and we introduce new themes regularly, really, to, to educate users or to help them discover different ways that they can engage with their health. One theme is cognitive behavioral therapy that we introduced last year. Um, and actually we're starting to roll out an actual program off the back of our dialogue acquisition, but I'll, I'll share more about that later, what we can do once we roll out new themes and just get a sense of utilization and take up of those programs or those content modules, and that can help us then inform HR the employer of, uh, what are some of the themes that their employee base are most engaging with and therefore help inform better decision making around the kinds of, uh, other benefits that they may want to, um, uh, acquire for their, for their teams. You know, that none of which need to be served, uh, offered by tick track, but at least the insight because our platform is, is quite broad enables a, a good sense of, um, of insight into the, the wellbeing needs or the general benefits needs of staff.

Speaker 2: 8:24

Excellent. Thank you very much. And just to add to that previous answer, how, how can wellbeing tech like tick track help to improve specifically employee happiness, Martin and therefore productivity levels?

Speaker 3: 8:37

Well, you know, wellbeing is a very broad theme, so it encompasses mental wellbeing, physical wellbeing, financial wellbeing, even social wellbeing. And again, the benefit of a digital technology is the speed at which you can deploy new themes and new programs based on the unique needs of each employer. So if an employer sees that they need that there there's a gap in say, um, social awareness or social connectivity across their, their staff, then, uh, you know, with, with a platform like ours, we can roll out campaigns that can help, uh, that can help to address some of those challenges either through, you know, activity, challenges that bring people together, even if it's in a remote way, but they can at least communicate with each other and share photos and all that, or to helping an employer to promote certain events that they, um, they may have on a regular basis. But, uh, I said, again, one of the, one of the real benefits of, of the wellness proposition as a whole is to be able to have something that is, um, adaptable to very many different people, you know, a wellbeing, a platform for wellbeing, such as ours, isn't focused on the people who are already running marathons or triathlons they're worried well. So, so to speak, the focus is on really supporting individuals who need to make some sort of a change to live healthier. They know they need to do it, but maybe there's a number of blockers that they had. The design of our platform. Elise is very much driven around behavior, behavioral science, really trying to motivate individuals and help them unblock maybe, and many times some of those psychological blockers that it are preventing them from achieving their goals. And then of course, like I mentioned earlier, the benefit of the utilization is the data, the aggregated analytics that can be provided back to an employer to help them understand what are the real needs of their, of their member base of their, of their employee base. Um, and what are the things that are being most used. And of course the outcomes, right, being able to demonstrate, uh, a great example is being able to demonstrate, uh, the impact on, uh, on, on activity, right? We see users on our platform that start relatively sedentary. In other words, walking say less than 3000 steps a day, and the impact of using a platform like ours to move them directly into an active state or walking more than, or, or, sorry, uh, exercising more than, say 150 minutes per week. Uh, and that's a huge, has a huge impact over long term chronic condition, risk, mental health, and number of other factors that can, um, lead to obviously higher productivity, um, uh, generally a happy workforce and a more connected workforce.

Speaker 2: 11:13

As part of my homework today, I was all over the, the, the tick track website and over the blog, uh, which is, uh, curated by a bunch of awesome people, including Rachel, hello, Rachel. And, uh, in one of the blogs, it, it highlights a study by office vibes that found that 70% of employees say that friendship at work is the most important element to a happy work life. While analysis by Gallup found that employees are 50% more likely to report high social wellness. If they have a best friend at work makes sense to me, it is generally considered that there are four pillars of wellness, physical, mental, financial, and social. While the first three are often focused on within a work context, the law should not perhaps be overlooked while many employers may be considering the, the fiscal health of employees, Martin. It's important. Also not to forget the mental health in the workplace and particularly social wellness. Why therefore does social wellbeing need to become more of a top concern for employers?

Speaker 3: 12:14

Social wellbeing generally obviously leads to healthier, happier workforce, so to speak, but I think social wellbeing starts at the culture of a company. You can have, you can integrate tools, but if you don't have, if a company doesn't have a strong, natural, organic culture, um, where people feel comfortable, safe, friendly, um, then you can have as many wellbeing tools or, or, or digital services as you want, but you're not gonna have a, that level of social connection and general happiness. So, you know, we can, as a, as a platform, we can help support drive positive culture, but it, it, you know, there's only so much that one can do. Um, uh, companies need clearly to have strong, uh, cultures that, um, ferment, um, uh, those kind of social dynamics that, that, that we all remember or recall or see in our, in those companies that we've been in that we've loved, uh, once you, if you have that culture, then digital technology certainly helped to really bring them about because they enable individuals. They remember H they enable rather HR to be able to, uh, drive campaigns around say, uh, different types of social gatherings and events. It could be something like, um, a, uh, the kinda your, your annual, um, uh, sports day, for instance, and use digital technologies to drive a little bit of competitiveness, um, or you could, uh, even create a challenge, uh, for your, you know, Christmas party dance off. And so digital technologies can help support and drive that social connectivity, but it really starts from, from the general culture. One of the things that we've seen a lot from tick track and just from the actual company perspective is as with many, we were on pretty much on lockdown for almost two years in and out of the office every now and then when it was allowable, but only recently have our staff really started to come back to the office semi regularly. And just the smile on everybody's face of interacting, um, in a, in a physical way, just meetings and sitting down and, and having those, uh, you know, water cooler chats or whatever. It's something that we, I, I don't think we realize that we missed, but that level of actual in, in physical, in person connectivity is, is something that we really, really lacked and digital technologies can only go so far. But I think that that balance absolutely needs to be there

Speaker 2: 14:48

Now that you, you founded all the way back in 11, the wellbeing market seems to have been growing rapidly over the last few years, of course, from a tick track perspective, what are the themes and trends that you've been seeing?

Speaker 3: 15:02

So over the last couple of years, some of the biggest themes have been about mental health connectivity as we just discussed. Uh, also just digital, uh, telemedicine telehealth services that, you know, if we were all working from home and unable to have physical, uh, appointments, there's been just a massive boom in the take up and adoption of digital technologies for, for medical appointments, uh, psychologist or mental health appointment, and really across a board physiotherapy and a bunch of others. We've also seen the rise in, um, digital classes for everything from yoga to, to just general physical hit ex hit training and exercises mindfulness. So everything that can, that could be effectively either delivered through a digital channel or codified programs that could be codified into digital programs have been really the, the main driving themes lately. One of the other things that digital technologies have enabled, um, uh, have enabled us to do generally is to address potentially previously considered taboo topics. So, you know, mental health for seniors, right? It's not really a, an area that seniors generally have felt very comfortable talking about in terms of mental health, but I, you know, the social isolation that happened as well of COVID 19 is one of the, you know, drivers of a greater uptake of mental health services for that category. This year, we're seeing a lot of interest in, uh, digitization of feminine health, also driving a lot more of the themes around menopause in other areas of, of women's health. Um, and also, I think we talked, touched upon it, culture, uh, team culture, um, surveys, a sense check around staff wellness. I think there's all these are, are kind of rising growing themes that I don't think are, uh, will have kind of a, a, a drop they will grow and continue to be, uh, key areas of interest across employers. The other thing that we're seeing is that, um, it there's been a huge increase in an understanding that employers are increasingly responsible or accountable for providing services that promote health and wellness to their staff specifically around mental health. So it it's just been this kind of almost, we've all almost totally accepted it, but it's not, you know, it hasn't been historic it's historical that 20 years ago, companies were helping to provide mental health services or, uh, or yoga services or anything in between. And I think we've, we've kind of all naturally, uh, adapted this expectation that employers are increasingly, uh, responsible or accountable for, uh, for providing services to support the health of their staff. And I think it will pay off in the long run in terms of greater productivity, longer retention, uh, and those companies that do the best. They're not gonna suffer this great resignation on the country. They're gonna be the ones where those that resigned from other places end up going.

Speaker 2: 18:10

Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. So there there's been an explosion of players in the health and wellness space, of course. And as a company that's been in the space for, well over 10 years, here's your big opportunity now, Martin, why, why didn't you share with our listeners, what makes tick track different from many of the, the newer or, or emerging companies out there?

Speaker 3: 18:30

Well, there's the, the fun and exciting side and the less exciting side. So the fun and exciting side is, you know, we've been, like you said, we've been in this for over 10 years. Um, and off the back of those 10 years, we've learned a lot about really what drives positive behavior change and sustained positive behavior change. Um, and that is not something that you can just invent overnight. You need years of experience, of, of learning of, of a basically adopting growth hacking, uh, tools in order to understand and optimize utilization of services that help people, um, adopt healthy habits and continue to adopt those healthy habits. We've also learned a lot about what kind of content is the most appropriate and delivers the highest levels of, of engagement and, and, and, and outcome. Um, and so we've learned a lot of the, the nuances and the mechanics to really drive high levels of uptake and high levels of utilization and therefore, um, satisfaction of the platform. On the other side, when you work with very large employers and very large insurers and government bodies, you can't just have an app. You need to be able to have the robust infrastructure to support the, the size of, of, uh, uh, of, of user bases that those organizations represent with the security compliance data privacy demonstrate that you are able to, um, to have 99.9%, uh, up, um, uptime, um, and just how you handle and manage and store that data. And so as you take the boxes of all those requirements to be able to deliver to, um, these kinds of organizations, that list of other players that exist in the market really, really starts to narrow into one or just two handfuls of companies. And so when we are, um, uh, pitching competitively to many of these arts companies, we only see a small handful of those companies that we compete with. Now that's in the B2B space, of course, from a B2B B2C side. Of course, there's many companies out there and consumers, and it's up to them to choose where they, they spend their, um, uh, their, their subscription budgets bill, one of the other themes or trends that we're seeing, um, that talk more about the buy side. In other words, HR, um, and also end users, their, their, their employees is that we're seeing an increasing amount of what we call app fatigue, right? I've I dunno how many hundreds of apps, um, I've got on my own phone and I only use a handful of them. I'm sure most people are the same. If you think about HR, um, HR professionals that are looking after the staff of hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of employees, um, they're bombarded by companies, frankly like us, uh, day in and day out trying to show what they can do, and everybody has the best of intentions. But the challenge that HR are, are finding, at least that we're seeing quite common is that during COVID, there was this frantic need to find solutions to be able to very, very quickly address the very drastic changes in day to day, life of staff, mental health people working, uh, remotely, uh, having physical problems, because obviously they didn't have ergonomic desks. People were, uh, desk workers, all these sorts of things. And a lot of those decisions probably weren't made with the most, um, you know, uh, rigorous decision making framework. And so a lot of, a lot of bad decisions were made and a lot of vendors were selected. What we're seeing now is a consolidation, right? More, uh, kind of companies have taken stock into what they've invested in. What's worked what hasn't worked, and there's a deep kind of a, a more robust analysis of what kinds of, of, of wellbeing or health benefits they should be offering. And what we're seeing is a real consolidation, trying to get as many of these services through one provider as possible. And that actually leads me to the, our entire reason why we joined, uh, forces with dialogue specifically because of that. And I can talk a little bit more about that later.

Speaker 2: 22:35

Well, let's talk about it now. Um, let's talk about that recent announcement of dialogue and, and tick track coming together through an acquisition. What, what opportunities does, does dialogue's acquisition of tick track create and what additional value will a customer likely see?

Speaker 3: 22:51

Well, I'll tell you very quickly about how, how we met. So we were, um, we were introduced, we were approached by them back in September of last year. Um, and it was one of these kind of Cupid arrows. I know it sounds really cheesy, but the, from the very first meeting, the, the cultural synergies were just uncanny. Um, and it was just a very, very natural conversation and, and exploration and a lot of the ways and approaches, um, that we take towards, uh, health, um, towards developing products in the health and wellness space just were, were, were very, very aligned. So we immediately understood that there were both cultural synergies, which are key to, to joining forces, but also from a product set. We always knew that wellbeing as much as we know how important it is in the day to day life of individuals, frankly, it was always a really, really nice to have on the part of employers when things were tough, they went directly to telehealth, telemedicine, tele you know, things that were, uh, solving a, an episodic problem, such as, you know, a, a, a medical, a medical issue. Now we have, we had a growing business of course, but we always knew that, um, we were just one part of the puzzle, which was the prevention, wellness, and prevention side. What dialogue brought was or brings is the, the diagnosis and the treatment side. And so what we quickly identified is that we don't believe there is any other player out in the market that has a fully integrated health platform that covers general daily wellbeing, the prevention aspects of wellbeing, the diagnosis, and the, the treatment of that. And does it not just from one app, but in an interconnected way, in a sense that you are, imagine you have back pain, you have you connect with a doctor on dialogues, um, uh, virtual primary care service. That doctor then, um, immediately says, right, here's an action plan within the platform that will appear that, right. When you get off the phone onto your, uh, dashboard within the app, that will give you a program for you to follow over the next couple weeks. And so that level of integration, while it sounds really obvious and really, uh, intuitive, we didn't see really existing in such an integrated way. And we know, you know, just, just from the feedback that we're getting across all, you know, our mutual client list, obviously we're bringing together is something that the market really lacked. And it's really validating, at least the hypothesis that we made, which was joining forces with dialogue. In other words, getting acquired by them will help to accelerate, uh, the mission that we have. And it's a very, very similar mission, which is, uh, to engage everyday people in their day to day health.

Speaker 2: 25:39

Excellent. Thank you. Okay. Now I want you to reach under your desk and pull out your crystal ball, please, because I, I, I'd love to hear from you now, as we look to wrap up today's interview with just two more questions, um, what, what are your predictions Martin for how the global health and wellbeing space will continue to evolve over the coming few years? And, uh, as part of that, maybe you can suggest if you believe it, it will remain a high priority for organizations and will digital solutions continue to play a major role.

Speaker 3: 26:11

So my crystal ball, it's a bit fuzzy. I apologize, but I think I'm starting to see something up here. I see a continuing of the, um, uh, of the onus on the employer to provide, um, the, an increasing amount of health and wellness services and general culture and benefits to their, to their staff. And the reason being obviously, you know, individuals only have so much to spend on different subscriptions. Uh, it's not health is one of those areas where people don't really understand or expect to pay. It's a very strange, uh, area of, to purchase because it's not one of those things that generally people expect to buy. What I mean by health health services. Sure. You get a, uh, membership to the gym, but more and more companies are, are actually doing that for their staff. And so people are, you know, pay money personal out of pocket for things like Netflix and other, uh, subscriptions, but health and wellness as key and important. It is to us because to an employer it's such an important facet of, of productivity, of, of culture and of general long term health of their staff. We're gonna see an increase in budgets, an increase in, in just, uh, uh, of staff members, focused on the wellbeing within the HR, uh, uh, kind of function of organizations growing those budgets for those services. Um, and I think it's, it's the right move because it benefits everybody. And I think actual, if you think about public health systems like you have in Canada, or like you have in the UK, it as employers take on more and more of that support, it helps to reduce the burden generally on the public health system. And in general, it's just supports society as a whole.

Speaker 2: 28:02

Excellent. And just finally for today, Martin, how can our listeners connect with you? So maybe that's through LinkedIn, maybe wanna share your email address. Maybe you are super cool and you're all over Instagram, TikTok and elsewhere. And also how can they learn more about all the cool things happening over attic track and of course dialogue?

Speaker 3: 28:19

Well, now I have two email, two email addresses, so I can share both<laugh>. Uh, my tick track email address is probably the easiest one is Martin, M E R T I NTIC track T CT, R a c.com. Happy to hear from any listeners feedback, comments and anything in between. And of course you can find me on, uh, on LinkedIn. I believe my, um, uh, my LinkedIn is M blender.

Speaker 2: 28:44

Perfect. Well, that just leads me to say for today, Martin blender. Exciting, fantastic news. Congratulations again. And thank you for being my guest on this episode of the HR chat show.

Speaker 3: 28:55

Thanks a lot though. It's been great to, to speak with you today

Speaker 2: 28:59

And listeners as a ways until next time, happy working.

Speaker 1: 29:04

Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR chat podcast. There are hundreds of conversations with business experts available for free on the HR Gazette website, apple, Spotify, and all the main platforms, and remember to like subscribe and follow us on social media.