With many changes happening in the workplace, the need to stay in tune with your employees seems more urgent than ever. How does your feedback policy shift when your workforce goes remote? How are your employees dealing with recent changes within the company? We understand that most companies strive to be inclusive and create a culture of open communication, yet the barriers employees face can keep you from capturing the authentic pulse of employee experience. That is why we are pro anonymous feedback at VoiceSifter and have built a platform that we believe solves for the standard anonymous dilemma.
2 Statistics Backing Feedback in the Workplace
A Harvard Business Review (HBR) article specifically outlined that when asked to submit feedback, anonymity is the number one concern for employees. When employees are certain that their feedback will remain anonymous, they are more likely to submit honest, productive feedback, and submit it more often. This is the type of positive communication cycle that can quickly help employers take an employee-driven approach to improving workplace culture.
A series of Forbes studies on employee engagement suggests that finding ways for employees to thoughtfully express themselves can have across-the-board benefits for a company, including improved employee retention and increased discretionary effort on the part of employees.
4 Effective Methods to Obtaining Anonymous Feedback
Everyone has blind spots. It is a fact of being a human. That is why bright managers and supervisors thrive on feedback. If you don’t know about a problem, it is impossible to fix it. It goes with the adage: If you can’t handle some scrutiny, you shouldn’t be a leader.
The Center for Creative Leadership cites that people are generally more honest with anonymous feedback. That is why their 360 instruments like their Benchmarks for Managers doesn’t indicate specific answers by direct reports and others that have completed the surveys. Are the managers able to take the information and improve? Yes, and Yes again.
3 Things to Consider When Choosing Your Employee Feedback Solution
Timeliness: How often are you checking in with employees? Is this a monthly send out or quarterly? Ideally your feedback tool will capture employee experience in real-time, providing a more authentic pulse.
Accessibility: How accessible is this tool for your employees? The more complex the tool the less likely employees are to engage. Make it easy for employees to reach you.
Investment: How much time & money is needed to ensure this tool is used? Are you having to create surveys, respond, etc? Time is money as they say.
How Does VoiceSifter's Text-line Measure Up to These Considerations?
Timeliness: Your text-line is active 24/7 and allows employees to engage on their own accord. Now we do recommend quarterly reminders to keep front of mind, but over all this text-line operates on its own and your task is only to respond when feedback comes through.
Accessibility: We chose text as our communication channel because it is the preferred channel of communication for the majority of people. Not to mention it accounts for ALL types of employees, no email required.
Investment: The time spent on our platform is minimal as you are only responding to feedback when it comes through. Our pricing is tiered based off of company size.
