Arena

Arena was founded by Michael Rosenbaum in 2009, but its roots began long before. During his time at Harvard and at the White House working in economics and law, Mike saw how inefficient the labor market could be because it was based on subjective perceptions of a candidate’s future performance. By applying and analyzing data to create more accurate predictions of a candidate’s performance, Mike argued that communities and labor markets could solve a host of problems. In 2001, he decided to put his theory into practice. Mike assembled a team to develop an analytics engine for selecting candidates based on the actual determinants of high performance. In order to test this engine, Mike used it to build a technology company, Catalyst DevWorks, which has since proven his theory, realizing substantial growth, garnering press from the likes of the Wall Street Journal and CIO magazine, praise from analysts and experts in IT including the leading analyst firm Gartner, and client accolades from organizations including Nike and L’Oreal. By 2009, enough data and results had been collected to deploy this engine – Arena - more broadly. Armed with this proof, Arena teamed up with Shady Grove Adventist Hospital. The goal was 20% turnover reduction. In fact, turnover decreased by 58%. After the Arena algorithms had an opportunity to learn, this improvement increased to 77%. Today, the Arena team serves a broader set of healthcare organizations, applying modern technology and data tools to workforce construction and talent identification helping to reduce turnover by at least 40%.