Co-Founders Barbara Sharp and Tim Offor, based out of Stone & Chalk Melbourne, are no strangers to conflict resolution. Between them, they have more than 30 years’ experience in crisis communications for some of the region’s highest profile scandals.
The peacemakers, Barbara and Tim, founded regtech startup Pax Republic in 2014 embedding all their know-how from their consulting days to create an anonymous digital platform inbuilt with AI and deep linguistic analysis to uncover the deepest issues lurking beneath workforce culture.
Their C-Sight anonymous online platform enables employee voice on business-critical issues, so that company leaders can hear the real truth about how their strategies are landing for their workforce.
Following the aftermath of the Royal Commission into Banking, Superannuation & Financial Services, Barbara explains Pax Republic offers a solution that gets people into a virtual room where people can have focused, facilitated discussions. This leads to collective intelligence being extracted for the sole purpose of better corporate decision-making based on rich data insights.
Barbara lights up when explaining the capabilities of the technology, “We provide forums to understand what’s really going on inside an organisation. It’s about reconnecting employees with their leaders, activating that voice for the benefit of the company’s progress.
“With enough data, you have a company-specific thumbprint of a workplace culture. It’s essentially a mass of stories and words, which gives you a much deeper read on the issue leaders need to understand better if they’re to make the right changes.”
The forum, which is invitation only, is set within a socially controlled environment with a few key ground rules to keep things civilised. Facilitators dive deep on the issues raised to get lots of different points of view. Think of it like a slow-motion meeting spanning a week, where people can dip in and out as they wish. People can even read, and not comment.
A friendly AI-powered moderator named Clarra surfs the forums and is able to pick up on dangerous language patterns which may lead to personal identification. If this happens, she’ll pop up in a private message to give you a gentle nudge, warning you that you are at risk of identifying yourself.
“This is a leadership tool,” Barbara affirms. “C-Sight is for leaders who know that listening to their people and acting on what they hear, knowing it’s data-backed, is going to guarantee long-term success in an uncertain world.”
