French startup Teale has secured a funding round of $11 million earlier this summer (€10 million). The company provides a mental health platform for employees and helps HR managers when it comes to preventing burnout or quiet quitting.
Alter Equity and Bpifrance’s Digital Venture fund are leading the Series A funding round. Existing investors Isai and Evolem are also investing once again in the startup.
Teale is a double-faceted platform. It can be seen as a perk for employees as many people believe their employers should provide some form of support when it comes to mental health. But it’s also been designed so that HR managers can see when there’s something wrong in the organization.
“Our mission is really to ask ourselves what we can do to democratize mental health, destigmatize this topic and really put technology, data and science at the service of mental health, obviously to help employees, but also to build healthier organizations,” Teale co-founder and CEO Julia Néel Biz told me.
When your company sends you an email and tells you that you can use Teale for free, it means that any employee can download and install the app and start using it to better understand their mental health. And it starts with a survey that will be used to rate your mental health based on multiple criteria.
“It’s a proprietary index we created with our scientific advisory board and the psychologists who partner with our team. Our scientific advisory board is made up of psychiatrists and doctors of psychology. This index has been scientifically proven to be a good measure of mental health,” Néel Biz said.
After that, Teale will recommend content that could be relevant to your current situation. Teale has put together a large content library with 1,000 pieces of audio and video content on stress, sleep, burnout, bereavement, infertility, etc.
And if that’s not enough, you can also book an appointment with a psychiatrist or a doctor of psychology. That’s an important feature as it can help you get started with a therapy when you don’t really know where to start.
Image Credits: Teale
On the management side, Teale can also be used to make sure that your company fosters a healthy work environment. Of course, Teale doesn’t want to act as a snitch that hands over a list of employees who aren’t doing well. Instead, the startup wants to give a broad overview of the current situation.
At any point in time, the HR team can see if Teale is actively used in the company — how many people created an account, how many people requested an individual session, etc.
And if there are more than 20 people in any business unit, department or country, Teale can indicate the average mental health score of this specific group. Some questions revolve around work load, management, the ability to disconnect, etc. Teale could be used to identify if a team is short-staffed or if there’s something wrong with a manager.
So far, around 100 companies have subscribed to Teale to grant access to the service to their own employees. Some clients include some big companies, such as Sanofi, SNCF, Cartier and EY. On average, 45% of the workforce use Teale. With today’s funding round, the company will expand its team from 25 employees to 80 employees over the next 18 months. Teale also plans to expand to new countries.
Image Credits: Teale