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SUMMARY
Most behavioural research on work is conducted in conditions that bear little resemblance to how work actually happens. The data is fragmented, the context is missing, and the signals are too shallow to draw conclusions that practitioners can act on. Kaamfu is building something different, a unified operational environment that generates continuous, structured data about how people actually perform. That is why Michel and I joined the Kaamfu Research Program as founding partners.
IN BRIEF
- Workplace research is incomplete – Most studies on work, wellbeing, and performance rely on surveys or fragmented tool data that captures opinions rather than behaviour.
- Fragmented data limits findings – When behavioural signals are spread across disconnected systems, researchers cannot study the full picture of how work conditions affect people.
- Practitioner knowledge goes unused – Industry experts in wellbeing and performance rarely have access to the operational data needed to validate or extend their frameworks at scale.
- Research Program changes the model – Kaamfu’s Research Program gives qualified partners access to structured, anonymized behavioural data generated inside a unified workspace.
- Kaamfu creates a foundation for applied science – Kaamfu makes it possible to study real work, in real conditions, with a level of precision previously unavailable outside controlled environments.
This article is published by Juliane Nitsche of MLC Advisory, advisor, investor, and contributor to the Kaamfu Research Program.
Michel and I have spent our careers working at the intersection of wellbeing and organizational performance, and we know the limitations of the existing research landscape well. Most of what practitioners rely on comes from surveys conducted at a single point in time, or from studies run in controlled conditions that strip away the complexity of real work. When we first engaged with Marc and Kaamfu as investors, what struck us almost immediately was the data, and what that data made possible for research. Joining the Research Program was the natural next step.
The Workplace Has Never Been This Legible
The modern workplace is, in research terms, a black box. Organisations generate vast amounts of operational activity every day, but that activity is scattered across dozens of disconnected tools. No single system has ever been able to capture it coherently enough to study it with rigour. Kaamfu changes that by design, bringing every task, conversation, time log, performance signal, and supervisory interaction into a single structured environment that generates a continuous, real-time behavioural record of how work actually unfolds.
From Michel’s perspective:
As specialists in workplace wellbeing and human performance, we joined the Kaamfu Research Program because it offers a rare opportunity to study human performance as it actually unfolds in real work environments. Most research in this field relies on surveys, interviews, or retrospective data. Kaamfu’s AI-enabled platform makes it possible to observe patterns of workload, interaction, pressure, and adaptation over time, at scale.
This is what makes it personal for me:
This creates a unique research environment and the empirical foundation to test and refine Human Performance Intelligence™, the framework I have developed to understand how performance is constructed, sustained, or degraded under real working conditions. The research program allows theory, practice, and data to finally come together.
Research With Consequences
The organisations Michel and I work with are dealing with real consequences: leaders burning out, teams underperforming, wellbeing initiatives that reach the wrong people at the wrong moment. Our role in this collaboration is to ensure that the models Kaamfu builds from its data are grounded in established best practices across organisational psychology and workplace wellbeing. There is a genuine risk with any AI-enabled system in this space that the patterns it identifies will reflect a narrow view of human performance. We are here to counter that, and as the dataset scales globally through 2026 and beyond, the research opportunities will grow with it.
The Science of Work Is Still Being Written
The organisations that will perform well over the next decade are those that understand their people with the same rigor they apply to their finances and operations. That understanding has to come from somewhere, and right now the available data is too shallow to support it. Kaamfu is building the environment that makes deeper understanding possible, and the Kaamfu Research Program is how that environment gets connected to the people best positioned to make use of it. The program is forming its next cohort of partners now, and this is still early.
