Oura launches offering to give employers insights into the health of their people

This comes at a time when employee burnout is rising, leading to people leaving their jobs

There are two trends major happening right now: one is the rise of digital health, and remote patient monitoring, thanks to the pandemic; as such, more people are taking an active role in their own health, and roughly one quarter of the US population, meaning over 82 million people, will use a smart wearable at some point this year.

At the same time, employers are taking a more active role in the health and wellness of their employees, both physically and mentally, especially as so many of them are choosing to leave. Employers want to be able to attract the best talent, and retain it.

The best way to get that information is, of course, right from the source and that is what Oura, the company behind the Oura Ring, a device that gives users personalized health data, insights, and daily guidance, will deliver with its new enterprise offering, called Oura For Business, which the company announced on Thursday.

Through this offering, organizations, specifically business corporations, employee wellness, healthcare, higher education, athletics, and the military, will be provided with data about their people, including fatigue, performance optimization, illness detection, health management, and burnout, which is now becoming a bigger problem for organizations, especially in the healthcare space.

Employees on the Oura For Business will get access to the Oura Rings and app, along with member-focused content for awareness and education, and access to events, including Webinars, Seminars, and Fireside Chats. The organization administrators, meanwhile, will be able to see anonymous Oura Ring metrics, through reports and tools to understand group-level scores. They will also be given guidance on how to take action based on employee wellbeing metrics. Each organization is able to custom design the employee wellness platform to meet their particular needs.

"Empower your employees to optimize their daily habits and prioritize health with personalized analytics. Oura's Employee Wellness solutions include compelling group-level insights that help connect individual outcomes with real world business impacts like productivity, absenteeism, and employee morale," the company says on its website.

So far, 200 organizations have signed up for Oura For Business, including Thrive Global, US Air Force, US Navy, US Army, NASA, Red Bull Racing, NASCAR, USA Surfing, Noom, OWN IT, University of Vermont, Clemson University, and the UFC.

“Oura For Business fundamentally improves how organizations of all kinds can support their people,” Tom Hale, Oura's CEO, said in a statement.

“Helping individuals thrive is how we create success and positive outcomes for society as a whole. We’ve already seen significant traction with enterprise customers and are excited to continue growing these offerings as part of the next phase in ŌURA’s evolution.”

Founded in 2013, the Finnish company uses its device to measures the quantity and quality of rest, including sleep stages, schedule, and nightly heart rate, to provide an overall Sleep Score; activity, which means looking at all movement habits including calorie burn, heart rate, inactivity, and recovery time; and readiness, providing a Readiness Score that uses sleep, activity, and body stress signals, such as temperature and HRV, to predict how much a person can take on that day.

Oura recently, which entered into partnerships with Gucci, Strava, Natural Cycles, and Therabody, and launched a new product, Oura Gen3 Horizon, has raised $148.3 million in venture funding from investors that include Lifeline Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Temasek, The Chernin Group, JAZZ Venture Partners, and MSD Capital; its most recent round, raised in April, valued it at $2.55 billion. 

(Image source: ouraring.com)