LOS ANGELES, CA, BetterWorks, a company focused on helping small and medium-sized businesses recognize, reward and engage employees, has raised an $8 million dollar Series A round from Redpoint Ventures. Funding will be used for hiring, expansion and continued development of the BetterWorks Perks platform, a simple online solution for employers to create, manage and measure employee perks programs. Total raise, including an early angel-backed round, brings investments to $10 million.

"We look for visionary entrepreneurs with bold ideas who use the Internet to disrupt the way people do business. We're especially interested in companies who can unite a disparate, fragmented market through technology," said Satish Dharmaraj, general partner at Redpoint Ventures, and BetterWorks' newest board member. "We invested in the BetterWorks team because of their big vision to build a technology-based solution for the country's six million small and medium-sized businesses who need perks programs to create better work environments. To date, the majority of solutions have been tailored to serve the interests of the enterprise and not the little guy."

Perks programs are part of a company's overall benefit offering and are meant to reward employees beyond salary. Common perks include education, child care, gym memberships, catering, even car washes. For most businesses, developing and maintaining a customized employee perks program is a difficult and time-consuming process. Programs are manually operated, lack spending flexibility and insight into performance, plus force business owners to choose between participating vendors based on what's-best-for-the-masses versus individual employee need.

"When you read about the best places to work, it's never about the salary, it's about the catered lunches, the daycare; it's the cool stuff that matters. I've built my own employee perks program before and it's impossible to manually build a program that makes everyone happy," said Paige Craig, CEO and co-founder of BetterWorks. "I'd make a deal with one gym and then hear about another gym an employee would prefer. As a small business owner I didn't have the time or the leverage to negotiate and manage dozens of vendor relationships. I realized there had to be a better solution and that I wasn't the only business owner who needed one."

The BetterWorks Perks platform lets companies deliver real-time rewards through a simple Web interface. The platform connects employees with locally-based vendors offering discounts, such as gyms, yoga studios, salons, laundry services and more. Employees simply find what interests them and click through their profile page to place the order, either paying for the discounted service on their own, or deducting from an employer-provided perk budget.

BetterWorks is a venture-backed company based in Los Angeles. Founded in 2010, the company mission is to help small and medium-sized businesses recognize, reward and retain employees by making work rewarding. The BetterWorks Perks Platform is a simple online solution for employers to create, manage and measure employee perks programs. Currently available in Los Angeles, the service is soon launching in San Francisco and New York. To sign up in minutes, visit: http://betterworks.com.