Help Your Employees Find Their People
Employees with real friendships at work stay longer, show up more,
and do better work · Sidekick helps build those friendships around
what people actually care about, organically and independently,
without a costly program for HR to manage
THE data
Loneliness Isn’t Just a Wellness Problem: It’s Also a Retention and Engagement Problem
The cost is already on your books – it’s called “turnover”
Up to 43%
Lower turnover when employees have a strong friendship at work – Gallup
Up to 2x
Base salary: the cost of replacing a single employee – Gallup
5.7 days
Increase in absenteeism per employee due to loneliness at work
$300B
Lost by American employers each year due to loneliness-related absenteeism, turnover, and added healthcare costs.
The U.S. Surgeon General has declared loneliness a “national epidemic” · The WHO has declared it a “global health concern” · And it reaches your balance sheet long before it shows up in an engagement survey
the challenge
Employees are Lonely, So They Leave
Today
A new hire starts and doesn’t know anyone beyond their team. Company happy hours feel forced. Slack channels go quiet. By month six they’re disengaged. By year one they’re gone – and it costs you half their salary to replace them.
With Sidekick
That same employee downloads Sidekick, picks their interests from 2,500+ categories, and finds coworkers who love the same things. They join a running club, a board game night, a Korean cooking group. They show up. They connect. They belong.
THE JOURNEY
From new hire to belonging in five steps
HR simply notifies new hires of their access to Sidekick – then sits back and watches what happens
👋
Employee Starts
Learns about Sidekick during normal orientation or onboarding
📱
Downloads Sidekick
Clicks on a QR code and creates a profile in 5 minutes or less.
🎯
Selects Their Interests
Picks from 2,500+ curated categories across 10 dimensions; adds any desired Particulars.
👥
Finds Their People
Discovers communities, events, and Kickits that match what you love. Everything is local and real.
💛
Shows Up & Belongs
That’s it. Nothing more for HR to do. Employees connect organically and independently.
The New Hire Example
A new employee joins your company knowing no one outside their team. Within ten minutes on Sidekick they’ve joined three interest groups and seen a Kickit for a weekend hiking trip. They go. They meet four other employees, one from a department they’d never have crossed paths with. By the holidays they have a community built around things they actually care about — not an org chart. They don’t stay out of obligation. They stay because they belong.
100%
of your posts reach employees
(compared to 2-3% on social media)
Zero
IT integration
(works on any smart device)
Near Zero
extra work for HR (just a small
add-on to existing onboarding)
The Old way
Slack, happy hours, and team-building exercises miss the people who need connection most
Remote workers · Introverts · New hires · Anyone whose people are in another department or office location
Traditional Approaches
Limited to team or departmental silos
Includes extroverts · Excludes introverts
One-size-fits-all · Low engagement
No way to connect across locations
Requires HR to actively manage
Employees quietly suspect they’re being watched
Sidekick
Connects employees across every team and location
Low-pressure, organic community-building
Interest-driven · Employees choose what they enjoy
Works for remote, hybrid, and on-site teams
Nothing for HR to do
Employee privacy is protected
Privacy guaranteed
You Pay · Your Employees Benefit
Sidekick works because it’s independent and organic · Sponsors only see what you choose to show them · Sidekick shares aggregate results – things like “34% of your employees enjoy tennis” – but never anything personal or that can be traced back to an individual
What Sidekick Shares
- Percentage of workforce active on the app
- Engagement trends over time
- Aggregate interests distribution
- Percentage of users with a friend at work
- … But only if the group size is large enough that the aggregate data won’t give away anything personal
What Sidekick Never Shares
- Users’ names
- Users’ profiles (including Particulars)
- Who joined what community
- Who attended what event or Kickit
- Messages of any kind
- Any data traceable to a single employee
Why Employee Privacy Is a Deal-Breaker
The employee who is most suspicious of an employee-sponsored app may be the one who most needs it. A benefit your people don’t trust isn’t a benefit, it’s a chore. Sidekick protects employee privacy in order to enhance employee social wellness.
Learn More With Our Industry-Specific Resources
All employers share the same overall challenges. But many industries face more specific issues related to their particular market segment. For example, municipal organizations and healthcare providers. Learn more about how Sidekick serves your industry by visiting our Resources page.
the Control panel
Everyone Else Measures Minutes · Sidekick Measures Friendships
Most wellness platforms cannot tell you anything more than your employees’ time-on-platform · But that’s not what you want to know, and it’s not what you want to buy
“41% of Your Employees Have a Friend at Work”
The outcome: not a proxy for it, not engagement standing in its place, but the thing itself, tracked over time
“17% of Your Workforce Care for an Elderly Adult at Home; 26% Enjoy Gardening”
The insight: aggregate interest and Particulars data tells you what your people care about and what they have to deal with
Sidekick is currently developing a control panel for community leaders that will provide leadership with aggregated data and various organizational and other tools. We anticipate a launch date of March or April of 2027. Our Pilot partners will have significant input into the design and functionality of the control panel, and we thank them in advance for their input and suggestions.
Now recruiting
Piloting and Learning with Trusted Partners
Sign-up now for our Pilot program and get free access for your people, hands-on launch support, and direct input into how we design our control panel.
🌱
PHASE 1: NOW RECRUITING
The Pilot
A small, one-time setup fee covers our costs and lets us know you’re serious. Free access for every employee. And Laura and Robert working alongside your team to launch it internally.
✓ Under Way
🖥️
PHASE 2: ~6 MONTHS
The Control Panel
An in-development desktop control panel for community and event managers, chock-a-block with organizational tools and access to aggregated user data analytics.
Next
🚀
PHASE 3: ~9 MONTHS
Paid Sponsorships
The initial Pilot period ends and we begin charging a per-employee-per-month rate for all new partners and sponsors. Pilot members grandfathered in.
future
Who’s already in
Tested and Verified · Ready to Launch
Sidekick has completed its Beta testing and market-segmentation work and is preparing to re-launch in September 2026 · We’ve even done a UX review with eye-tracking technology · We’re ready to roll
OUR INITIAL PILOT PARTNERS (SO FAR) IN EUGENE
Hult Center for the Performing Arts
Eugene Symphony
Eugene Science Center
City of Eugene
First Congregational Church
Don Dexter Gallery
75%
of testers said they’d recommend
Sidekick to a friend
This app, I truly believe, will become a household name and be phenomenally successful. You’ve done really good, and deserve to be wildly successful. Bravo!
This is exactly the type of app I would like to use. Trying to make friends is difficult as an adult and I could see myself using this app to make more friends.
From a usability study of 100 volunteers who tested Sidekick for 30+ minutes
✅
Field Notes from a Friend
Watch short-form videos by our CEO exploring the philosophy behind Sidekick: why human creation has intrinsic value, why imperfection is a feature, and what comes next.
Frequently asked questions
The Things We Know You Want to Ask
We love talking to our partners, potential partners, and allies in the fight against loneliness,
but here are some answers to the most commonly asked questions
💵
What Does It Cost?
Partners in our Pilot program pay a small, one-time setup fee to cover our costs and so we know you’re serious. Access is free for every employee. Once the control panel ships, there may be additional costs associated with its use, but your employees continue to receive free access.
📵
Is This Just More Social Media?
No. Sidekick is emphatically not social media. It’s the opposite. While social media platforms optimize for engagement and ad revenue, Sidekick was designed to move people off their phones and into the real world. It’s a social catalyst.
🎭
Will It Lead to More Cliques, Drama and Lost Productivity?
No. Cliques and drama arise in low-trust environments. Sidekick helps build a culture of community and friendship. It’s the antidote for cliques.
📈
What If Nobody Uses It?
It may take a little while for people to catch on, but 75% of testers said they’d recommend Sidekick to a friend. People want this on its own terms, which is the whole point.
🌍
What If Our Employees Are Remote, Hybrid, or Distributed?
Interest-based connection works across locations. But in-person friendship needs proximity, so it’s strongest where your people are concentrated. Tell us your situation and we’ll be straight with you about the fit.
⚖️
Could We Become Liable?
No. Recommending Sidekick is no riskier than recommending a restaurant. You’re sharing a resource, not assuming responsibility for it.
🔒
How Do You Protect Our Employees’ Privacy?
Sidekick does absolutely no cross-app tracking or other surveillance, and we never sell our users’ data. Not even to you (although we will share with you aggregated trends and usage patterns). Sidekick is full of privacy protections and we don’t even share our users’ last names.
⏱️
Is This Just More Work for an Already-Busy HR Department?
No. Sidekick requires no IT integration, no rollout to administer, no programming to run – just a small addition to your usual onboarding. And we can help you with that.
🤝
Is This Just Another DEI Headache?
No. While groups based on some kind of shared affinity can certainly grow naturally, Sidekick is not a top-down program. Employees find each other voluntarily, privately, and on their own initiative.
The bottom line
The Cost of Loneliness Dwarfs the Cost of Friendship
Sidekick works because it’s independent and organic · Sponsors only see what you choose to show them · Sidekick shares aggregate results – things like “34% of your employees enjoy tennis” – but never anything personal or that can be traced back to an individual
What a Lonely Workplace Costs You
- ~$9,700 average turnover cost per departed (lonely) employee
- Up to 2x an employee’s salary to hire a replacement
- Higher absenteeism, lower engagement, higher benefits utilization
- Employee burnout and stress due to social isolation
- Disengaged employees – the #1 union recruiting pool
What a Friendly Workplace Gives back
- 43% less turnover · 81% less absenteeism
- 7x greater engagement among employees with a close friend at work
- 64% fewer safety incidents · 41% fewer quality defects
- Better cross-department collaboration & innovation
- Happier, healthier, more-loyal employees
Woman-owned
Mission-driven
Built in Eugene, Oregon
The Best Retention Tool is Belonging
We’re currently taking a small number of founding pilot partners who are committed to their
employees’ social wellness · If that sounds like you, the next step is a conversation