Absenteeism continues to plague offices across the country. Illness, childcare logistics, and transportation issues are the top reasons why someone calls out of work, which ultimately wreaks havoc on a company’s bottom line.
It is a particular problem for customer-facing and seasonal roles in the service sector, according to a recent report by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. An estimated one million US employees miss work each day because of stress alone.
Atlanta-based entrepreneur Lauren Wilson knew this problem well from her time in the HR space. She wanted to combat absenteeism and help companies fill any unmet hours, so she dove into the startup world with ImIn.
The app is all about workforce optimization. Employees can pick up specific hours based on their needs that week, helping them break away from the rigid 9-5 while ensuring employers have the people they need to get through the day successfully and fully staffed.
The app also provides the opportunity for companies to create incentive structures and improved employee communication options. Employees are able to incentivize certain hours that are harder to fill.
“There’s also a reward system with silver, gold platinum status that is customizable to each client,” Wilson added.
The “work-on-demand” model exploded with the rise of the gig economy along with the new realities facing remote and hybrid work environments. That momentum helped ImIn spin out as an independent company earlier this year. It immediately caught the attention of outside investors. Collab Capital, the Atlanta-based VC firm led by Jewel Burks Solomon, Justin Dawkins, and Barry Givens, invested a $1 million seed round in the HR startup earlier this summer.
Wilson is using the seed funding to automate the scheduling platform and bring the app to market. She told Hypepotamus that she is getting ImIn off the ground by targeting business process outsourcing (BPO) companies but doesn’t think the app is limited just to that segment.
Wilson has hired a Principal of Sales and a product manager to help the startup scale. She is also strategically bringing the development team in-house.
Wilson, a graduate of the University of Georgia, Georgia State, and American University, started her career at the Georgia-based outsourcing services company Chime Solutions.
She is one of a growing number of founders in the Southeast making their mark on HRTech in our post-pandemic world.
And with the new seed investment, Wilson joins an impressive yet unbelievably small list of Black female founders who have raised venture capital funds recently. Only 49 Black female entrepreneurs raised more than $1 million in the year 2021, according to Business Insider. On the list from the Southeast include Resilia (New Orleans), The Labz (Atlanta), GoodFynd (Alexandria, Virginia), Kushaeu (Fort Worth, Florida), and Mixtroz (Birmingham).
