Veriff founder backs Estonia-based Yera to gamify daily work processes

According to Gallup's 2022 State of the Workplace Report, 79% of people are not engaged at work. Low employee engagement costs the world $7.8 trillion in lost productivity, equivalent to 11% of global GDP. Employees often lack the incentive to perform routine tasks efficiently, such as resolving customer issues, making daily progress in sales and software development, promptly logging in their work time, or updating their task status. This presents challenges to project leaders and managers committed to leading the company to success. 

Enter Estonian-based startup Yera which aims to boost team engagement in routine work with custom rewards and unique experiences. The platform is based on research into what improves engagement and peak performance, as well as the science of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. It offers a fully automated SaaS platform for increasing the performance of teams in the workplace, which encourages recognition, and employee engagement in essential work processes.

So how does the platform work? It leverages gaming elements such as earning points for completing routine tasks that the team members can exchange for meaningful rewards they can choose. With Yera, workplace teams – customer support, sales, developers, and others – can significantly improve their quality of support, upsells, on-time delivery, time tracking, and other critical processes that underpin successful results.

The startup has now raised €535,000 to gamify daily work processes. The seed investment was backed by industry experts and angel investors such as Veriff founder Kaarel Kotkas and the former director of engineering at Wise Alvar Lumberg.

In today’s times where work is hybrid and remote, employee recognition apps have gained momentum. Year will be competing with the likes of Bonusly, Guusto, and Centrical.

Talking about its roadmap post the funding, Eduardo Levenfeld, co-founder and CEO of Yera said: “The investment will help us to expand our presence in Brazil and Europe, notably in the Nordics, U.K., Germany, Poland, Spain and Portugal. We also want to pilot in Asia, targeting markets, including India, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and others.”

Yera is already in active use in the Baltics and Brazil. The startup enables seamless onboarding by providing integration with a wide range of workflow management tools, such as Slack, Zendesk, Trello, Jira, and Azure DevOps. The company’s Perk Store, where employees can choose their reward, is fully customisable and allows upgrading with custom motivation packages.

Janno Siilbek, co-founder and CTO of Yera, commented: “The rules of the economy have changed. A new generation of young people has grown up playing computer games. According to research, almost 90% of employees say that gamification makes them feel more productive and happier at work. Gamification is considered a remarkably potent flow state trigger that can play an essential role in employee retention. Our product successfully combines elementary processes with gamification elements to turn repetitive work tasks into engaging activities.”

Kaarel Kotkas, founder and CEO of Veriff, added: “The way Yera helps to connect people with their progress through ongoing feedback in the form of performance-based rewards is unique. This approach perpetuates a motivating work environment that fosters productive teamwork and supports superior business results.”