Years ago, when Sanish Mondkar took a long trip across the United States, he realized that there were stark, problematic discrepancies between employers and the people they employed.
To critics of late capitalism, this may sound like an obvious observation. But Mondkar, who has a master’s degree in computer science from Cornell University, says looking at the problems up close made all the difference.
“As I traveled from city to city, I noticed the constant ‘For Rent’ signs hanging on the windows of countless labor-intensive businesses such as retailers and restaurants,” he said. “At the same time, I saw employees changing jobs frequently and still struggling to make a living. This discrepancy between the needs of employers and the reality of employees touched me.”
Inspired by that experience, as well as stints at Ariba as EVP and Chief Product Officer at SAP, Mondkar set out to build a startup that helps companies manage their workforce – particularly contract and gig workers. His company, Legion, announced today that it has raised $50 million in funding led by Riverwood Capital and with participation from Norwest, Stripes, Webb Investment Network and XYZ.
“My goal was to rebuild the enterprise category of human resources management to maximize work efficiency for companies while creating value for workers,” Mondkar said. “I wanted to differentiate the company itself by focusing on WFM’s intelligent automation and employee value proposition.”
Legion is designed to help customers—employers like Cinemark, Dollar General, Five Below, and Panda Express—manage their hourly workforce by automating certain decisions, such as: B. how much work should be deployed where and when workers should be scheduled. Taking into account demand forecasts, work optimization and employee preferences, Legion’s platform creates work schedules.
Employees whose companies are enrolled in Legion can request how they would like to work and set their preferred work hours through the mobile app. Legion’s algorithm then attempts to match workers’ preferences with the company’s needs.
Legion also has performance management tools and some sort of reward program.
“We use algorithms trained on a mix of Customer data and third-party data that Legion collects from its partners,” Mondkar said. “This integration enables predictive planning and resource allocation.”
In addition to basic planning features, Legion relies – very trendily – on generative AI with a tool called Copilot (not to be confused with Microsoft Copilot). Copilot answers questions about work using an organization’s employee handbook, labor standards, and training content. In the coming months, Copilot will gain the ability to aggregate work schedules and fulfill requests to add or delete shifts or change staff assignments.
“To attract and retain staff, companies that employ hourly workers must emulate job-like flexibility,” Mondkar said. “Legion delivers this with intelligent scheduling automation. Managers can match staffing to projected needs, bridging the gap between employee needs and the needs of the business.”
That’s all well and good, but two important things stand out to me about Legion: its privacy policy and its Earned Wage Access (EWA) program.
Legion says it stores customer data for seven years by default – a long time by any standard. Even more worrying, the data includes personal information such as employees’ first and last names, email and home addresses, age, photos and work preferences. Great praise.
According to Legion, the data is necessary to “facilitate planning in accordance with labor regulations” and users can request deletion of their data at any time. However, I question the ease of the deletion process – and how transparent Legion is about its data retention policies to its customers.
My other criticism of Legion is InstantPay. Legion’s EWA program allows employees to access a portion of their earned wages prior to their scheduled payday. Legion charges workers $2.99 to transfer earned wages immediately, while next-day transfers are free — that might not sound like much, but it can add up for a low-income worker. Legion describes this as a benefit for hourly workers, giving them “greater flexibility” and “control” over their finances, as well as a tool for business retention. But EWA programs are under scrutiny from policymakers, consumer advocates and employers. Legion’s mobile app.
Some consumer groups argue that EWA programs should be classified as loans under the U.S. Truth in Lending Act, which provides protections such as: B. the obligation of lenders to inform in advance before increasing certain fees. These groups say EWA programs can force users into overdrafts while effectively collecting interest through fees.
Furthermore, it is not clear whether EWA programs represent a net benefit for employers. Walmart recently tried to address turnover by giving its hourly employees early access to wages. Instead, employees were found to be using EWA tended to stop quicker.