The MD of digital media agency Social Chain has joined the board of employee engagement platform Your FLOCK.
Katy Leeson joins an array of specialists at the Manchester firm, which says it is entering its most intensive round of product development and growth to date.
Your FLOCK enables companies to understand their employees’ individual values, how they align with company values and culture, and how to maintain that over time, so that companies can hire, keep and develop the best talent.
Serving as MD of Social Chain for the last five years, Leeson has overseen one of the largest growth periods in the company’s history. She has been trialling Your FLOCK with some of her teams, which is what led her to her wider involvement on the board.
“Using Your FLOCK, and hiring the right people, we have learnt more and more about our company culture and the needs of our team. Not about the marketing values but the real values of the people and our business,” she said.
‘’This learning is the real deal of the company culture and is key for the employee experience at Social Chain, be that working from home or in the office. It’s all about the skills you can give your people as an employer. Not just skills for the job but skills for life, as happy people will create the best work for clients.”
She joins a board featuring Tom Auld, an expert in machine learning/AI; David Levine, the former CEO of AR firm DigitalBridge, who is now ‘entrepreneur-in-residence’ at the Enterprise City Accelerator and advises tech startups; Jess Jackson, who has supported myriad tech startups via her senior advisor role at The Growth Company, a key investor in the latest round; serial entrepreneur and NED Sandy Lindsay MBE; and Laura McGowan, a HR specialist.
Your FLOCK has worked with a number of enterprises to pilot and trial the product and currently has a waiting list of more than 100 businesses wishing to take part in the next round of product development.
“The founding partners, Dan Sodergren and Michal Wisniewski, have carefully and very impressively crafted a board which literally spans the full gamut of knowledge and expertise we now need as we move into the next exciting phase of development and growth,” said Lindsay.
“I’ve learned so much already from all of the longer standing exec and new board members and Katy’s appointment is another ‘win’ for the business, especially as she has been hands on trialling the product in one of our leading target sectors, ‘fast growing enterprises’, so can give us some real insight.”
Leeson said: “Working with Your FLOCK is going to be really interesting. Not just from a tech point of view, but from a people perspective.
“They are unlike many other data and people analytics startups. They don’t just talk about culture, values and diversity, they live it.”