CultureIQ to Merge With CEB’s Workforce Surveys & Analytics Group

Engagement and feedback platform provider CultureIQ will merge with CEB’s Workforce Surveys & Analytics division. WS&A is to be divested from CEB’s parent, Gartner.

Exactly what this means isn’t entirely clear, and the companies are keeping details under wraps until the deal closes sometime around April 30. However,in a press relerase CultureIQ CEO Greg Besner, who will lead the combined business, hyped the transaction as “an exciting combination” of one company with “strong modern technology and one with decades of expertise and intellectual property.”

Apparently, the idea came from the tech-focused private equity firm ParkerGale, a CultureIQ customer. According to the website Mergers & Acquisitions, Chicago-based ParkerGale flat-out acquired CultureIQ and worked with existing CultureIQ investors to finance the merger. The PE firm will be majority owner of the new company.

Devin Mathews, a partner at ParkerGale, said he believes the market’s looking for “a high-tech and high-touch approach to employee engagement.” As companies move away from traditional surveys, he said, they’re increasingly “listening to their employees using technology and fostering engagement through action plans built on decades of benchmarking and best practices.” He sees the combined CultureIQ and WS&A as being a prime mover in that market.

Certainly, no one can argue that the engagement and culture technology space remains an open battlefield and HCM technology providers from established enterprise solutions to neuroscience-driven startups are looking for approaches that can give employers an edge. CultureIQ’s always struck us as one of the more thoughtful players in the space, and combining its subject matter expertise with WS&A’s analytics and benchmarking tools seems like a smart move. As for internal operations, the newly merged company will focus on investing in areas of growth “and to preserve the best of both organizations,” M&A said.

Among ParkerGale’s existing portfolio companies are ediscovery software developer iPro, master data management technology firm Profisee, and WorkWave, a provider of field-service business software.

Image: geralt / Pixabay

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