While traveling across the United States many years ago, Sanish Mondkar realized that there was a clear and problematic disconnect between employers and the employees they hired.
Down critics of the late phase of capitalism, this will seem to be an obvious commentary. But Mondkar, who earned a master’s degree in computer science from Cornell, says looking at the problems up close made a difference.
“As I traveled from city to city, I couldn’t help but notice the constant ‘for rent’ signs in the windows of countless labor-intensive businesses such as retail stores and restaurants,” he said. “At the same time, I saw workers changing jobs frequently and still having difficulty maintaining their wages. This discrepancy between the needs of employers and the realities of employees struck me.”
Inspired by this experience, in addition to his work at Ariba as vp and chief product officer at SAP, Mondkar decided to build a startup that helps firms manage their workforce – especially contract and gig employees. His enterprise, Legionannounced today that it has raised $50 million in financing led by Riverwood Capital with participation from Norwest, Stripes, Webb Investment Network and XYZ.
“My goal was to rebuild the enterprise workforce management category to maximize enterprise productivity while delivering value to employees,” Mondkar said. “I wanted to differentiate the company itself by focusing on intelligent WFM automation and the employee value proposition.”
Legion is designed to help customers – employers similar to Cinemark, Dollar General, Five Below and Panda Express – manage their hourly workforce by automating certain decisions, similar to how much labor to deploy, where and when to schedule employees. Taking into account demand forecasting, work optimization and worker preferences, the Legion platform generates work schedules.
Employees whose firms are situated in Legion can use the mobile application to ask how they need to work and set their preferred working hours. Legion’s algorithm then tries to match worker preferences to the company’s needs.
Legion also includes performance management tools and a rewards program of sorts.
“We use mixture-trained algorithms 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 — very trendy — uses generative artificial intelligence through a tool called Copilot (not to be confused with Microsoft Copilot). Copilot answers questions about work based on the organization’s worker handbook, work standards and training content. In the coming months, Copilot will gain the ability to summarize work schedules and fulfill requests to add or remove shifts or change worker assignments.
“To attract and retain employees, hourly companies need to emulate gig-like flexibility,” Mondkar said. “Legion delivers this with intelligent planning automation. Managers can match staff to anticipated demand, closing the gap between employee needs and the needs of the business.”
That’s effective, but there are two disturbing things about Legion: its privacy policy and its Earnings Access Program (EWA).
Legion says it retains customer data for seven years by default – a very long time by any measure. More worryingly, the data includes personal information similar to worker names, email and home addresses, age, photos and skilled preferences. Big right.
Legion says the data is needed to “facilitate planning in compliance with labor regulations” and that users can request deletion of their data at any time. However, I query the ease of the deletion process and Legion’s transparency regarding data retention policies for customers.
Another problem I have with Legion is InstantPay, Legion’s EWA program, which allows employees to access part of their earned wages before scheduled payouts. Legion charges employees $2.99 for fast earnings transfers, while next day transfers are free – it might not seem to be much, but it could actually add up for a low-income employee. Legion presents it as a profit for hourly employees that provides them “greater flexibility” and “control” over their funds, in addition to a tool to sustain their business. However, EWA programs are under scrutiny by policymakers, consumer rights advocates and employers. Legion mobile application.
Some consumer groups argue that EWA programs needs to be classified as loans under the Truth in Lending Act, which provides protections similar to requiring lenders to provide advance notice before increasing certain fees. These groups claim that EWA programs can force users to overdraft, effectively collecting interest in the form of fees.
Additionally, it is unclear whether EWA programs provide net advantages to employers. Walmart recently tried to combat job losses by giving hourly employees earlier access to wages. Instead, it turned out that employees were using EWA he quit his job more often.