An anonymous employee feedback tool

 

How do I get anonymous feedback from employees?

 

When things aren’t going great at work, it easily makes your workdays grey.

But not just as a leader, the same goes for your employees.

A lot of managers struggle with deciding on what steps to take to change.

• What should I do to improve employee engagement?

• And how can we, as leaders, easily get feedback to know we’re pushing in the right direction?

This is particularly common in blue-collar environments or the healthcare sector.

Here, employees aren’t sitting at a computer all day.

At many workplaces, asking their employees to use their own phones for an anonymous employee feedback tool or app, isn’t an option.

So how can you easily get feedback from your people?

 

Anonymous Staff Feedback at the exit door

An increasingly popular way to get feedback is to use smiley feedback devices.

It’s an easy way for staff to give anonymous feedback - they simply hit a green or red button as they finish their shift.

 

From an ergonomic point of view, if you hang a feedback terminal right next to the exit point, it’s “impossible” to miss it as you leave work.

If you have a time attendance system, that’s a great spot too.

To use the anonymous employee feedback tool you evaluate your workday by responding to a standard question.

How was your day?

“It has really helped us understand the mood. It has proved some assumptions and blown others out of the water. It forced us to question our assumptions about a modern workforce and work environment”, one user says.

 

 

Devices vs Employee Feedback Apps

Let’s do a little experiment.

Think back on your worst workplace experience. Perhaps it’s a business where you stayed for a short time. Or a company where you had a terrible manager who didn’t trust anyone.

Now, imagine that manager asking you to download an app to rate your workdays at that company.

Would you trust that the information is truly gathered in a way for the feedback not to be tracked back to you?

At workplaces where there is an open conflict, you might also have problems getting people to download the survey app.

Or get feedback like “hey, pay me extra if you want me to use my personal phone!”.

Using a shared device to give anonymous feedback means it feels less personal. It’s a device that everyone on your team uses. Not just you.

 

Open up the conversations at meetings

Of course, having an anonymous feedback tool doesn’t mean you don’t have to talk with people anymore.

There’s nothing better than face-to-face conversations to get coworkers more engaged at work!

Open dialogue in the workplace is key for managers at all levels in the organization.

What are some best practices to complement the anonymous feedback survey?

Use daily meeting huddles to adapt to a style of continuously solving things at work.

• What makes your staff press the green smiley? Make sure you and your company keep doing those things. Or do more of them!

• What happens on days when there’s a lot of red feedback? Or when the red is constant? Take action to correct.

 

Ongoing feedback

Rely on the data to guide you as you move forward, but don’t replace the workplace conversations with anonymous employee feedback tools.

The goal is to create a safe space where staff shares honest feedback, to complement the daily mood data.

And create a culture of conversations.

With daily feedback surveys, it’s also possible to separate the data per shift.

This way managers can spot differences and pinpoint where to act first in order to increase engagement.

 

 

Anonymous suggestion box

Having an anonymous suggestion box can help those employees who don’t feel confident (yet) about speaking up and share how they feel at work.

Just make sure you stay transparent by reading the messages out loud at meetings.

So what f it’s a message that’s clearly out of line?

You can acknowledge it and say “Hey, I got a letter in the suggestion box that insults the management team. I understand that some people are really angry and upset, but this letter I won’t read out loud”.

Let’s keep it factual, and professional.

Even if there are things you know you can’t fix right now, simply talking about it out in the open, shows you’re committed.

And that goes a long way when it comes to improving employee engagement.

 

 

Simple Tools

In today’s business world, there’s not much time to spare.

Yearly surveys are quickly outdated as things move fast.

Finding the best anonymous employee feedback tool for your employees means you need to look at what would work for your team.

Is it better to have fewer features? Digital? Online? App? A terminal?

Involve your team as early as possible as you decide on an anonymous employee feedback tool.

They’re the ones who know your workplace and their coworkers the best.

Ask open questions to find out how to best move forward - together.

And remember, you want to capture feedback so you can ACT to improve engagement.

 

Hej! I’m Rebecca, cofounder at Celpax. We’re a Swedish company that manufactures simple tech tools. Leaders in 60 countries improve employee engagement with our Celpax device.