Luke Dawson, founder of Cofortis, explains how his company is taking steps to improve the wellbeing of employees in the workplace.
Tell us about your business?
At Cofortis, we work with chartered psychologists to design bespoke wellbeing strategies for employees. Simply, I believe that everyone deserves the right support. But, that’s a very hard thing to provide – especially at an organisational level. The proactive support that someone needs to feel maximally inspired and productive is entirely dependent on who they are, what industry they’re in, and what they’re doing!
In other words, it can be extremely hard for organisations to comprehensively audit their employees’ wellbeing. It’s even harder to implement—exactly—the right interventions in response to data collected by that audit. That’s where we come in. We help organisations design bespoke strategies for auditing and proactively supporting their employees wellbeing.
Firstly, we let you tell us what areas of wellbeing you’d either like to measure or improve, because your wellbeing initiative will always depend on your specific organisation and employees. We’ll then go away and design a bespoke questionnaire that’s designed specifically to capture the information most relevant to your objectives and requirements.
Now, most of the questions in the wellbeing questionnaire are quantitative. That means we can export the data and visually see, instantly, where we need to focus your wellbeing strategy in order to have the biggest impact on your employees’ wellbeing and performance. Then, your psychologist will meet with you or your team on a monthly basis to coach you through your wellbeing strategy implementation.
When you’re ready, we just send the same survey again and measure the difference – it’s a baseline comparison analysis. So, we can actually measure the impact of your interventions, which were backed and supported by our chartered psychologists.
What is your background?
I studied Philosophy at University College London, then worked in tech for around three years. One thing Philosophy taught me was to always investigate the root-cause of whatever interesting challenge I was contending with.
When I first started to explore how I could help organisations to create tailored wellbeing interventions for their employees, I began by exploring the core issue. That is, it’s very hard to open up about what support you need in the workplace, which means it’s often very hard for organisations to know how to best support their employees. That’s why we work with a network of industry-specialising psychologists to help organisations understand where to look, and what to look for, and what to do with the information they find! It’s amazing.
What sets you apart from your competition?
It’s simple. We provide extremely tailored support, that’s specific to you, and your employees’ needs. Everything is bespoke, from the survey, to the wellbeing strategy, to the techniques that you work with your dedicated psychologist to deliver. We’re here to support you, by helping you to support your employees.
How do you see your market evolving over the next few years?
I feel as though our attitude towards wellbeing is shifting incredibly quickly; we understand how vital proactive support is for ensuring individual and organisational success. I believe we’re beginning to understand how every specific company requires its own specific employee wellbeing strategy.
What’s the hardest thing about running a business?
Switching off. When you truly believe in what you’re doing; when you truly have a mission, it’s hard do, or think about, anything other than that.
What have been the biggest challenges you’ve faced?
Spreading the word! We want more people to know our mission and give us their ideas of how we can best support their people.
What’s the best decision you’ve made so far?
Deciding to pursue a vision that I knew I should pursue. If you really believe in what you’re doing, you have to chase it. You just have to. You’ll regret it otherwise.
If you could go back and change one thing, what would it be?
I’m not sure I’d change anything. Everything you do is a learning experience, which means even when things don’t go exactly as you thought they would, they’re valuable experiences.
What has been your proudest achievement so far?
Having the courage to take the first step and set up my own company. It can be a very daunting move, but for me – it was the only right one!
What are your hopes for your business in the next five years?
I want every organisational and HR director in the UK to hear the name ‘Cofortis’ and instantly think ‘Bespoke wellbeing strategy, tailored to us, supported by experts.’
