The business world has seen a trend in employers paying more attention to the thoughts and feelings of their employees by taking surveys and asking for feedback. 

Three Iowa State students saw this trend and created their own company called PollUp Solutions Inc., hoping to profit off it. The business exploded, landing them a nomination for a 2017 Prometheus Award. 

David Leo, senior in management information systems, Kenyon Brown, junior in management information systems, and Neil Saigal, senior in computer engineering, had already been working on software in their free time when they came up with the idea for PollUp. 

PollUp is a tool for companies that takes employee feedback and simplifies it for the employers. This information can be viewed on a phone app. 

“To break it down even simpler, all these companies spend all this money on these huge, robust annual surveys … and then they wait to pile up all these problems or people spill out all these problems once or twice a year and what we’re instead doing is we have a software piece that sort of does it more day by day,” Brown said. 

This method keeps companies solving problems that are relevant since this program consistently checks in with employees.

All their work can be found on pollup.net, where it states that “when 66 percent of employees feel disengaged at work, we know the typical survey is no longer enough to understand how your employees truly feel.”

Brown brought up the stigma that comes with human resources. Typically, those on the outside look at them with distain. 

This is what led to a shift in human resource’s approach at businesses across the country. 

“Because of all of [these] new transitions and these new HR departments trying to rebrand themselves and call themselves ‘people departments’ basically, they’re seeing crazy statistics,” Brown said. 

Companies that implement these new methods are seeing employee retention increase by about 20 percent and performance increase by about 15 percent, Brown added. 

Leo brought up companies like Google that do quirky things to keep employees happy such as putting swings in their office. He thinks that this movement came from other companies seeing an influx of people wanting to work at places like Google, causing them to pay attention to what makes employees happy and productive. 

The company has grown from three college students working on software in their free time to hiring interns and contracting developers, though it is still in the development period. It hopes for a successful launch in the coming future. 

CYstarters, a program that helps Iowa State students start their own company, aided PollUp in its earliest stages. The company received $6,000, which accelerated the process. 

Leo, the only member of the group who is graduating this spring, has had the unique experience of deciding whether to stick with this after college or move on to a new job. 

Still applying for other jobs, Leo has found that putting this start-up on his résumé is on the brink of too impressive. Employers were unsure if he will stick around if PollUp takes off. 

He eventually received a full-time job that he will transition to after graduation. 

PollUp is one of three student start-ups nominated for the Student Innovation of the Year Prometheus Award that were started by Iowa State students. The results will be announced April 20.