Mayo tech firm pioneers software to cure corporate 'diagnostic fatigue'

FOR decades, the multi-billion-dollar enterprise HR industry has relied on a simple formula: deploy a massive employee engagement survey, identify the cultural fractures, and leave management to figure out how to fix them.

But according to Brian Bakeberg, group CEO of Mayo-based SaaS firm An Even Better Place to Work (bp2w), this model is fundamentally broken. He calls it 'Diagnostic Fatigue' - the corporate equivalent of paying millions for a world-class X-ray machine but refusing to buy the medicine.

To solve this, An Even Better Place to Work has officially pioneered an entirely new category of enterprise software: ATPD™ (Accredited Transformational Personal Development).

Positioned as a direct disruptor to legacy survey giants like Workday, Peakon, and CultureAmp, ATPD shifts the corporate world away from top-down 'HR-led surveillance' and ushers in the era of the 'self-correcting workforce'.

"Traditional employee surveys trap companies in a toxic 'parent-child' dynamic," explains Bakeberg, who, alongside his co-founder Orla Bakeberg, previously built a 2,000-employee enterprise from scratch before a highly successful exit. "HR acts as the parent trying to 'fix' the employees. Management is left paying a massive 'management tax' - wasting up to 40% of their time babysitting internal friction."

Bakeberg points to a massive demographic collision to explain the failure of legacy HR tools.

"Look at the macroeconomic data: Millennials and Gen Z now make up 74% of the global workforce, while global workplace disengagement currently sits at a staggering 79%," he says. "Corporate leaders treat these as two separate statistics, but we have proven they are the exact same people.

“The modern workforce is disengaged precisely because they are being constantly surveyed and micro-managed. They fundamentally reject the 'parent-child' model. They want autonomy, they want peer-to-peer accountability, and they want the tools to fix their own teams."

Unlike traditional platforms that stop at measuring sentiment, An Even Better Place to Work’s ATPD engine automates the cure by giving employees the autonomy they crave.

When the platform's initial 5-minute diagnostic detects friction within a specific division, such as a drop in trust, accountability, or communication, it bypasses the traditional HR bottleneck. The software instantly hands the local line manager a specific, 15-minute, self-directed activity to run with their team to resolve the issue on the spot. No external consultants required.

The methodology underpinning the software is not just theoretical. Based on an 18-year longitudinal study of over 500,000 employees, the An Even Better Place to Work framework was recently published in The Harvard Brain. The research centres on NINS (Nonconscious Influential Neural Sequences) - the deeply ingrained biological scripts that dictate how the human brain actually performs under stress.

"The multi-billion-dollar training industry has a fatal flaw: the implementation gap," Bakeberg notes. "Consultancies teach principles, but under stress, human beings don't rise to the level of their principles; they fall to the level of their neural habits. ATPD doesn't just teach theory; it engineers the habit. We automate the NINS at the ground level."

The results of this bottom-up approach are shaking up the enterprise space. An Even Better Place to Work has already displaced incumbent diagnostic tools in Tier-1 organisations, retaining clients year after year. Client data shows up to a 67% drop in absenteeism and a 40% reduction in management time wasted on people problems.

Furthermore, as the world’s only globally CPD-accredited transformation employee engagement software, employees engaging with the ATPD system automatically earn 24 Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits annually, converting cultural improvement into a tangible personal development CV asset for the workforce.

Operating globally from their headquarters in north Mayo, the founders are proving that the future of work isn't about gathering more data.

"The Fourth Industrial Revolution requires a self-correcting workforce," says Bakeberg. "If you are tired of paying for a diagnosis and want to start automating the cure, it’s time to move beyond the survey. It is time for ATPD."

An Even Better Place to Work is the pioneer of ATPD (Accredited Transformational Personal Development). Awarded European CEO of the Year 2024, Ireland's Best Employee Engagement Company, and named a finalist in the SFA National Small Business Awards 2026 for Innovation, An Even Better Place to Work provides the 'Autopilot for Culture' for Fortune-level enterprises globally and those striving to be the best. From 10 to 10000 employees we got you covered.

More information on An Even Better Place to Work here.