Founder: Octavius Black (pictured) started the workplace training provider MindGym
Workplace training provider Mind Gym has seen trade rebound strongly as the group benefited from its increasing shift to digital products.
Revenues at the consultancy exceeded pre-pandemic levels after surging by 24 per cent to £48.7million in the year to the end of March, with the proportion from repeat customers climbing to 86 per cent.
Digitally-enabled sales also continued to represent more than three-quarters of revenues despite a slight move back towards in-person learning as lockdown restrictions were loosened.
Yet the business made a larger underlying pre-tax loss of £0.5million due to a significant increase in inflationary costs and investment in infrastructure.
Over £8million has been spent by the group since the start of the coronavirus pandemic developing new digital products, including the online coaching tool Performa and the Behavioural Change Platform (BCP).
The latter product is not set to launch until next year, but Performa went live in January and generated more than £500,000 in annualised revenue across its first 12 weeks of operation, according to the firm.
Mind Gym anticipates Performa providing further growth this year and helping it return to profitability, even with the economic uncertainty caused, in part, by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Chief executive and co-founder Octavius Black believes the company should benefit from a number of structural factors that were accelerated or arose out of the coronavirus pandemic.
He noted that corporations are now expected to speak out on critical political issues, like the war in Ukraine, or face potential backlash from their employees, or customers on social media.
Objective: Mind Gym runs focus groups and seminars with employees at some of the world’s largest firms to try and improve their performance and the working environment
In addition, he said the increasing trend among workers to voluntarily leave their place of work – known as the ‘Great Resignation’ – provides another opportunity for the group.
This has been caused by workers seeking jobs with more flexibility and quality during the pandemic, leading organisations to raise salaries or job perks in order to attract new talent.
‘In the last two years, business and society have changed fundamentally,’ remarked Black, a school friend of former Prime Minister David Cameron.
‘Widespread homeworking came suddenly and has reset employees’ expectations of what they do and where they do it.’
On top of this, he said the large and profitable ‘human performance’ market is expanding and ‘massively disaggregated,’ with no firm controlling more than 1 per cent of the sector.
Investment bank Liberum said the learning and development market is worth £296billion and this does not include areas like wellbeing and culture which have grown since the pandemic.
It added there is evidence that large businesses are beginning to invest more in human capital initiatives but this is unlikely to take off until the second half of the year.
Founded in 2000, Mind Gym runs focus groups and seminars with employees and managers at some of the world’s largest firms to try and improve their performance and the working environment.
The group has worked with staff at a majority of S&P 500 and over 60 per cent of FTSE 100 companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, Vodafone, and Unilever.
It debuted on the London Stock Exchange in 2018, netting Black, his barrister wife Joanne Cash, and fellow co-founder, psychologist Sebastian Bailey, a windfall of £46million between them.
