Welbee

Startup opportunity

England’s teaching staff job satisfaction is the lowest globally against comparable economies, with a third of teachers reportedly suffering from increased stress levels and poor mental health. Staff wellbeing in schools has long been under prioritised and lack of support sees 30% of teachers leave the profession within the first 5 years of employment.

Welbee founder, Mark Solomons, came to Nova having spent 10 years working with senior educational staff to improve leadership behaviours and culture in their schools. He understood the importance of staff wellbeing on a school's performance, and noticed the lack of tools available to support them.

Mark knew this was a growing problem, with schools under increasing pressure from Ofsted to demonstrate wellbeing as a priority to improving schools performance. He believed that technology was at the heart of creating an effective solution to this problem.

Since Co-founding with Nova

• Validated concepts, designs and prototypes with School’s, Multi-Academy Trusts and Teachers.
• Development of software components - Survey platform and Welbee voice.
• Creation of brand, website & go to market strategy.
• Secured trials in over 300 schools across the UK.
• Increased staff wellbeing in schools by an average of 78%.
• Saw Teacher retention rates improve by 45% over a 6 month trial period.

Together we’ve developed the Welbee system - a wellbeing improvement platform for schools that converts staff feedback into actionable insights and measurable improvement plans. Through anonymous surveys and detailed reporting dashboards, Welbee analyses answers from staff and creates bespoke action plans that help senior leaders to improve staff wellbeing in their schools.

Employing Nova’s lean startup methodologies we were able to move through multiple product iterations based on feedback from over 100 school teaching staff and leadership team members.

The validated product is now successfully being used to improve wellbeing in schools and multi-academy trusts across the UK. Looking forward, plans are already underway to scale internationally and into other public and private sector industries.