Show HN: Anonymous Feedback Tool for Teams • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Anonymous Feedback Tool for Teams

#41

Post by krageon » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 8:53 AM UTC

beachy wrote: post #34

dt3ft wrote: post #30

Employee surveys are never anonymous, even if you say they are. If I get a link containing an ID, it can be traced to me. If I had a bowl of tickets with these links, and was offered to select one (lottery style), only then would I trust in anonymity. Of course, the survey would have to be reachable from outside of the corporate network for all this to work.

> If I had a bowl of tickets with these links, and was offered to select one (lottery style), only then would I trust in anonymity. Actually a really great idea perhaps. In the HR space there is definitely a place for pseudonomous feedback/issue raising. Not anonymous where a disgruntled employee can raise 10 separate issues and appear as 10 disgruntled employees. Not sure how your idea would work in practice but let…

"in the HR space" is where anonymity must exist, otherwise the feedback can never be safe. A "Human Resources" department is hostile to humans (it exists to better exploit you, as an agent of your employer), so you must act as if you have an adversarial relationship with it.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous Feedback Tool for Teams

#42

Post by blowski » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 9:04 AM UTC

dt3ft wrote: post #39

blowski wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use OfficeVibe, and I have full employee access. There is absolutely no feature anywhere that shows me who submitted a comment. I could just about hack one together by putting each person into a one-person team, but the user would be able to see that themselves. Sure, we can imagine a conspiracy where my CEO has a special button, but I strongly doubt it. That said, it's still frequently obvious due to people's wri…

If I get a link with a unique code to my work email, I (as a developer) know that it can be traced back to me, so I will not be totaly frank with my answers. Even if the link is not unique, it can be tracked to me as DNS is managed by the corp and they can know at what time which computer accessed the site.

If I were that paranoid about my employer I’d leave anyway.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous Feedback Tool for Teams

#43

Post by dt3ft » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 9:06 AM UTC

samsari wrote: post #40

dt3ft wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine it working like this: 1. A set of questions is created on which the employer would love to get answers to from employees. 2. If a company has 100 employees, 100 unique tickets are printed out on a piece of paper (it could contain a qr code which leads to the survey) 3. All paper tickets are placed in a bowl at the reception and employees are able to take a ticket each 4. Employee goes home, uses their phone…

What would prevent one person taking a handful of tickets home and answering the survey a dozen separate times, skewing the results dramatically?

That's why the bowl needs to be at the reception, where someone can observe how many tickets a person takes and makes sure they only take one.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous Feedback Tool for Teams

#44

Post by techdiff » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 10:34 AM UTC

bigmattystyles wrote: post #28

Maybe I'm getting old and/or too sensitive, but I'd get rid of the 'on crack' in the flatter hierarchy section. On a practical reason, not everyone will understand what it means, and on another, yes, I too was a kid of the 90s/00s and used that expression, but now I'm in my 40s and the expression is somewhat loaded.

This is actually a good call. I'm a similar age and didn't really look at it like that. Will get it changed though. Thank you!

Re: Show HN: Anonymous Feedback Tool for Teams

#45

Post by techdiff » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 10:47 AM UTC

underwater wrote: post #36

I really don't understand the paranoia around employee surveys. In 20 years as both an IC and a manager I've never seen them used in a way other than described. If your manager wants to fire you they don't need to create a complicated ruse to get evidence that you're unhappy, or that you have opinions or think that they are a bad manager. None of which are anywhere near a justification for firing, anyway. In fact, at…

Absolutely, I have a friend who forwards all his linkedin approaches to his boss, just to keep them on their toes. Ahaha.

I've been part of teams and seen exit interview data reviewed openly with names, supposedly anonymous feedback twisted to unmask people and D&I surveys where really personal information has been shared in areas it shouldn't be. But that's just where I've been. I think part of what we're doing is a response to that.

The bigger part of it is rapid, in-the-moment responses to issues impacting the team, clients or partner businesses. Because this ideally works weekly, and responses need to be fast and short, it sort of fulfils a different need than a traditional survey. At least, we're seeing different data back with our test group so far anyway.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous Feedback Tool for Teams

#46

Post by techdiff » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 10:52 AM UTC

dt3ft wrote: post #39

blowski wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use OfficeVibe, and I have full employee access. There is absolutely no feature anywhere that shows me who submitted a comment. I could just about hack one together by putting each person into a one-person team, but the user would be able to see that themselves. Sure, we can imagine a conspiracy where my CEO has a special button, but I strongly doubt it. That said, it's still frequently obvious due to people's wri…

If I get a link with a unique code to my work email, I (as a developer) know that it can be traced back to me, so I will not be totaly frank with my answers. Even if the link is not unique, it can be tracked to me as DNS is managed by the corp and they can know at what time which computer accessed the site.

This was the failure of the first version of the build years ago. We had positive and negative links sent via SMS in that one, which took you to a page where you could add a comment - anyone with some level of dev knowledge worried about hitting the links and certainly about commenting on the page.

The decision for us to house the whole interaction within SMS was also a response to links in SMS getting much sketchier to click. Emoji responses are more expensive to run, but they're smoother to work with and more useful for team feedback.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous Feedback Tool for Teams

#47

Post by techdiff » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 10:53 AM UTC

blowski wrote: post #42

dt3ft wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I get a link with a unique code to my work email, I (as a developer) know that it can be traced back to me, so I will not be totaly frank with my answers. Even if the link is not unique, it can be tracked to me as DNS is managed by the corp and they can know at what time which computer accessed the site.

If I were that paranoid about my employer I’d leave anyway.

I get what you're saying for sure, but I think there's a level below that where you need to deliver some bad news into middle management about what's happening and it can be "career limiting" to say it, so people avoid the issue. Hopefully they gain a level of safety to deliver that message through us.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous Feedback Tool for Teams

#48

Post by techdiff » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 10:55 AM UTC

rcaught wrote: post #27

To ensure anonymity, you could always reprocess feedback through something like ChatGPT. > rewrite the following and remove personally identifying information: "you're not good at your job, you have a bad attitude, especially with Katelyn." > "Performance in the job is not up to standards and there are concerns about attitude, particularly in interactions with colleagues."

This is a super interesting idea. It might muddle things like sarcasm, in-jokes (we see a lot of those around Christmas party time) and things like that. But even if it was something the user could control perhaps, it might be a great addition.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous Feedback Tool for Teams

#49

Post by techdiff » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 10:59 AM UTC

hnbad wrote: post #37

techdiff wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great idea. Thank you! We will look into it for sure. We're looking at WhatApp, WeChat, etc. too and trying to decide the best way for us to let the staff decide how they want to receive the message.

If you're looking to expand to continental Europe, I'd strongly suggest WhatsApp if you want to stick to the SMS-style interactions. The only SMS messages I get are one-time verification codes and roaming notifications. Everything else is usually spam.

Good info, thank you! We were pushing on WhatsApp for South America and Asia (we tested through Singapore, Philippines, Myanmar, Indonesia and Malaysia but pulled back on the region because SMS carrier support is so varied. New Zealand is a nightmare too. But being well used in EU, we might need to bump this up the roadmap.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous Feedback Tool for Teams

#50

Post by techdiff » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 11:03 AM UTC

blowski wrote: post #35

beachy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I had a bowl of tickets with these links, and was offered to select one (lottery style), only then would I trust in anonymity. Actually a really great idea perhaps. In the HR space there is definitely a place for pseudonomous feedback/issue raising. Not anonymous where a disgruntled employee can raise 10 separate issues and appear as 10 disgruntled employees. Not sure how your idea would work in practice but let…

We use OfficeVibe, and I have full employee access. There is absolutely no feature anywhere that shows me who submitted a comment. I could just about hack one together by putting each person into a one-person team, but the user would be able to see that themselves. Sure, we can imagine a conspiracy where my CEO has a special button, but I strongly doubt it. That said, it's still frequently obvious due to people's wri…

I will take a look at OfficeVibe for sure. How frequently do they send it out?

While many managers won't do it, usually it's an innocuous thing like being able to move employees between teams and see where data moves that give things away. Not saying that's what's happening in OfficeVibe at all, but it's a common fault.

Writing styles and people exposing themselves is definitely an issue. One commenter here had a great idea on rephrasing through ChatGPT or similar to mitigate that issue.