Discover Germany | Special Theme | Successful Start-ups, Switzerland
Beekeeper provides different ways of internal communication in one app.
Keeping employees informed “We believe in the potential of every single employee.” This is the main idea behind the internal communications tool, Beekeeper, which supports information flow and sustainable communication in teams or large, scattered groups. It is the company’s mission to connect all employees and foster continuous engagement. After four years, Beekeeper is already used in over 100 countries around the world.
and tested a pilot named ‘Beekeeper’ in three hotels. The rest, as Grossmann says, is history. Employees adopted the new tool rapidly and it soon became the central communication channel for 45,000 people.
TEXT: THOMAS SCHROERS I PHOTOS: BEEKEEPER
Nowadays, Beekeeper has become the primary communications and engagement tool for companies like Holcim, Europa Park, Marché and Hyatt, while Beekeeper itself has grown to 40 employees with offices in Zurich and San Francisco.
Like any start-up, Beekeeper did not originally start with a vision of becoming a global platform. Rather the founders, Cristian Grossmann and Flavio Pfaffhauser, had started it as a solution to a local problem. As a spin-off from their studies in computer science and engineering at ETH Zurich, the two aimed to increase engagement and communication between students with their social community, ‘Spocal’. Grossmann explains, “We launched our student app in 2012 and it 86 | Issue 46 | January 2017
immediately became one of the most popular apps in Zurich.” A local hotel that has been advertising in the app has seen its power and took interest in the platform. The hotel management has been searching for an effective way to reach every single employee, even those who lacked computer workstations and were traditionally more disconnected, such as housekeeping or service employees. They found their solution in ‘Spocal’,
Holcim Central Europe When trying to understand Beekeeper’s influence and potential, it is easiest to look at some case studies. One of the company’s prominent customers is Holcim Central Europe, one of the world’s leading suppliers of cement and aggregates.“The compa-