Website: www.workpath.co
Management: Eddie Peloke, CEO
Founded Year: 2015
Headquarters: Richmond, VA
Description: Workpath technology organizes, manages, and digitally dispatches labor to perform important services in healthcare and beyond.
Nurturing reliable teams with transparency
“At Workpath, all of our values deal with being open, transparent and direct. This allows us to build trust within our team and also allows collaboration as we can all contribute and help move the company forward,” says Eddie Peloke, CEO, Workpath. According to Peloke, openness is a key trait of becoming a strategic leader. Also, it is important to do some self-reflection now and then and be strongly aware of both your strengths and weaknesses. Besides surrounding yourself with talented people, it is crucial to support them and help them give their best which would eventually contribute to the growth of the organization. “I like to surround myself with incredibly smart people and it’s my job to remove the hurdles and get out of their way,” says Peloke. His interests outside of work are inspiring too. Peloke is an avid reader and contributor to business cases in the healthcare industry involving the use of technology to make organizations more efficient, transparent, and effective.. He also enjoys listening to podcasts, especially the ones related to business, technology, and startups.
Openness to testing
The Healthcare industry is profoundly sensitive as any minor change in the processes would make a direct impact on the patient’s health. A scenario as such translates to a plethora of hurdles to embracing innovation and trying new things. Experimentation is the key part of innovation but in the case of Healthcare, there’s no place for trial and error. This is why the sector is tremendously slow both in terms of technological progression and adoption. According to Peloke, this slowness is one of the biggest challenges that the industry is currently facing. “Healthcare is a slow-moving, high stakes industry. With startups, especially tech startups, you want to move fast but when you’re dealing with healthcare, you have to get it right, especially when a patient’s health is at stake,” says Peloke. The industry would become more equipped and efficient if the health systems are more open to testing these new ideas sooner. Fortunately, many Healthcare companies are already working on it. “Healthcare is an industry that affects us all so I love seeing all of the innovative companies trying to change healthcare,” says Peloke.
The journey
Workpath originally began as a tech-enabled service company. Initially, they provided on-demand phlebotomists and had built an entire technology platform to manage and dispatch their network. They continued to have companies who had their healthcare network ask to use Workpath’s technology and not the labor. In January 2018, the team decided to pivot and become a true tech company selling Workpath’s platform via a SaaS model. Peloke expressed that the team at Workpath is incredibly smart, talented and driven and seeing what they have accomplished in such a short time is incredibly rewarding. He considers nurturing such a team as a typical success.
When You Fail, Learn Why!
According to Peloke, failure is healthy up to a certain extent. To be successful, you have to look at each case as a learning experience. “When you fail, learn why and move on. Our success as a company comes both from the things we did right and what we learned when we failed,” says Peloke. Peloke believes in co-foundership. When you have other people on the journey with you, they not only help to push you forward but hold you accountable which is crucial for success. Also, the different ideas and perspectives you get from your partners with diverse backgrounds can be incredibly valuable. He also advises approaching the potential customers early to get validation that what you are creating has merit and is needed.