MyEmploy
From a Research Project to an Empowering Employment Platform
About the Founder
Joanna Butler is an Occupational Psychologist and senior leader with 15 years of human resource development (HRD) experience across the UK and the Middle East, specializing predominantly in the public sector. Her deep expertise lies in the end-to-end design, implementation, and evaluation of employability, skills, and education services. Throughout her distinguished career, she has successfully delivered a diverse portfolio of complex initiatives, including large-scale organizational development programmes, rigorous research and evaluation frameworks, product management, training, and the service design of psychosocial support frameworks. In addition to her advisory and operational work, Joanna shapes the next generation of industry professionals by leading Scotland’s only British Psychological Society (BPS) accredited MSc in Occupational Psychology at the University of Strathclyde Business School.
Objective
MyEmploy began as a research project by our customer, Joanna Butler, aimed at helping job seekers and advisors better understand and measure employability. With LOOPSIO’s support, it evolved into a fully functional web application that tracks progress, identifies strengths, and improves outcomes across multiple user levels: from individual job seekers to advisors, managers, organisations, and super-organisations.
In November 2023, MyEmploy was awarded £10,000.00 from the Stephen Young Entrepreneurship Awards, enabling the business to accelerate product development and begin progress toward an AI-powered real-time coaching tool for advisors.
For LOOPSIO, MyEmploy was more than engaging with the customer since it became a partnership that challenged us on our early steps, shaped our processes, and contributed to our own growth as a team and company.
What We Delivered
Over two years of close collaboration, we transformed the customer’s academic research into a scalable, investor-ready platform:
Prototype & Employability Score
Built the first functional version, implementing the customer’s research-backed model into code.
Web App Redesign & Optimisation
Took over project management, refining the user experience and addressing initial performance issues.
Feature Expansion
Iteratively introduced multiple user levels: job seekers, advisors, managers, organisations, and super-organisations.
Performance Improvements
Reduced advisor/manager dashboard loading times from 20–30 seconds to near-instant.
Agile Iteration
Added features and refinements over time, adapting continuously to new insights and needs.
Team Growth
Expanded LOOPSIO’s development team with specialists to maintain momentum and quality.
Our Approach
• From Research to Reality – Worked closely with the customer to translate academic concepts into practical, usable features.
• Structured Collaboration – Weekly calls and ad-hoc meetings ensured fast clarification and alignment, with emails used for documentation.
• Step-by-Step Delivery – Early stages focused on informal progress sharing; later phases adopted structured checkpoints and milestones.
• Co-Creation Mindset – Balanced the customer’s vision with LOOPSIO’s technical expertise, shaping the product together.
• Progressive Scaling – Layered functionality step by step, scaling from simple advisor-job seeker interactions to complex organisational-level structures.
Results
• Predictability Score in Practice – Converted research into a working tool for advisors to assess employability day-to-day.
• Measurable Outcomes – Enabled advisors to track individual job seekers’ progress over time via periodic questionnaires with optimised performance like cutting load times from 30 seconds to nearly instant.
• Sustained Partnership – The customer continues to collaborate with LOOPSIO, reflecting strong trust and alignment.
• Shared Growth – The project developed both MyEmploy’s platform and Loopsio’s own processes, fostering mutual evolution.
Conclusion
For LOOPSIO, MyEmploy has been a shared journey of growth, challenge, and reward. From solving technical hurdles to shaping collaborative processes, both teams evolved together.
The ongoing partnership demonstrates our ability not just to deliver software, but to co-create platforms that embody a customer’s vision. With MyEmploy, we have shown how iterative design, transparent communication, and technical excellence can turn research into a scalable tool that empowers both users and stakeholders.