Romanian startup theCoRD.ai launches an AI coach for companies and employees

theCoRD.ai (the Coaching Results Driven AI) analyses, using machine learning algorithms, employees' conversational patterns during online team meetings and then provides actionable coaching recommendations to help employees be more productive and have shorter, but more effective meetings. Innovative features include analysing team meeting dynamics, recognizing patterns in meeting behaviours, and assessing managerial competencies. Based on these indicators, theCoRD.ai proposes concrete solutions on how each team member should interact and collaborate.

By analogy with a sports team, theCoRD.ai looks at team meetings as the field where team members come together, practice, and pass "the ball" to each other. AI's team coaching solution focuses on analysing the dynamics between team members, and observing how they communicate and collaborate during meetings.

The AI team coach analyses several indicators, such as the level of engagement and interaction of participants, the level of meeting facilitation, the amount of time each participant spends talking, the dynamics of discussions and recurring polarities, the topics discussed versus the planned ones, the roles of team members in managing online meetings. The proposed recommendations consider the different levels of experience in an organisation, from entry-level employees to middle and top management.

So, while team members receive personalised coaching information and recommendations on how to be more effective, the management team gets a clear overview of the dynamics in their remote teams.

theCoRD.ai has been developed in the context of the spread of remote working (156% increase in the number of remote working employees worldwide in the last 6 months), but also the need for companies to identify talent internationally, in a labour market where it is challenging for employers to find, retain and help develop the right employees.

According to research firm Zippia Research, US employees spend up to 33% of the work week in online meetings. 71% of these are considered unproductive, with employees spending an average of 31 hours per month in unproductive meetings.

Companies with fewer than 50 employees waste an average of $18,000 per year on unproductive meetings. Organisations with over 100 employees waste an average of $420,000 annually on unproductive meetings.

"In today's rapidly evolving world, the way we work together is just as crucial as the work we do. We founded theCoRD.ai with a vision not just to streamline meetings or optimise team dynamics, but to fundamentally reshape the very essence of remote collaboration. Our mission goes beyond creating an AI tool—it's about pioneering a movement, one where every voice is heard, every idea valued, and where the collective wisdom defines progress," says Ruxandra Cord, founder of theCoRD.ai, noting that academic researchers and companies can now join the collaborative development of the product, with managers able to implement the solution for free and then contribute feedback and recommendations on how the solution could be developed further.

"When we open our doors to co-creators, we issue a call to action, not just an invitation to test a product. This a call for innovators and dreamers to join hands and co-create the future of work and revolutionise the essence of collaboration for future generations. The journey is long, and the challenges are many. But with a community of passionate collaborators by our side, the future of work is not just a dream - it's a commitment," adds Ruxandra Cord.

TheCoRD.ai solution was developed by a team of more than 20 specialists, including team coaching professionals, artificial intelligence and machine learning researchers, and software developers, over the course of a year. Also, a partner in the development of the product is the Natural Language Technologies Research Center of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Bucharest.

The investment in the development of theCoRD.ai solution was almost €300,000, of which €121,000 was in the form of a grant from Innovation Norway, the Norwegian government's most important instrument for innovation and development of Norwegian business and industry. The grant was obtained in the EEA Grants Norway 2014-2021 program, under the SME Growth Programme Romania.

So far, the development process of the AI Team Coach has involved training AI and ML models based on more than 3,000 online team sessions. The investment has been directed into manual annotation of sessions, research and development, training of AI and ML engines, and testing and validation of the product.

TheCoRD.ai solution is aimed at small and medium-sized companies, mainly operating in dynamic industries such as IT&C, and marketing, these being the sectors that recruited the most remote employees in 2023.