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Employee feedback apps are powerful and disruptive, and they have the potential to redefine how we manage our organizations.

As the economy grows and the job market gets hotter, employee engagement and retention have become a top priority. Most CEOs are bending over backwards to make their companies a great place to work. Free food, unlimited vacation, yoga classes, and lavish educational benefits are becoming common… and in some cases, wages are also starting to rise.

But even as attention shifts toward the health and happiness of staff, employee engagement remains surprisingly low. Gallup tells us that only about one-third of employees are actively engaged, Glassdoor data shows an average engagement of a C+ (3.1 out of 5), and Quantum Workplace believes engagement is at its lowest level in eight years.

Building a highly engaged workforce is difficult, and only getting harder. Today, employees are more empowered, mobile, and demanding than ever. New research by MRINetwork shows 90 percent of recruiters—the highest percent in the past five years—believe “candidates are now in charge.” So if you aren’t thinking about how to keep your people happy, they might pick up and leave. Similar research shows unhappy employees who stay can be a bigger problem than those who leave; they have an oversized negative impact on everyone else.

What can we do? How can leadership teams and managers keep up with what their employees feel and need, and how can technology help?

Enter Employee Feedback Apps

Our research shows that a new approach has arrived: open, anonymous employee feedback. Just as customer feedback has transformed the customer experience, employee feedback is transforming the employee experience, and has the potential to totally redefine the way we think of “employee engagement.”

Consider what feedback and ratings have done for our lives as consumers. We can “like,” “rate,” or “evaluate” almost everything we buy, leading to a better shopping experience, better customer service, and products that more quickly adapt to our needs.

GE, which started the traditional performance management many companies are redesigning, now believes “Fast Feedback” is the key to its future. The company is piloting an app called PD@GE to let people post notes of encouragement, advice, or criticism under categories like “insight,” “consider,” and “continue.”

Anonymity Trumps All

We can’t talk about feedback and ratings systems without discussing the issue of anonymity.

In the consumer world, if you poorly review a restaurant or “down rate” a driver on Uber, there are likely no major consequences to you; in fact, the company may take steps to directly address your concern. At work, however, it’s critically important to make the system anonymous.

While most employees don’t really trust the anonymity of surveys (after all, they arrive in your email inbox), these new apps and other feedback tools are designed to provide assurances to users that their identities will not be revealed, and that data is aggregated in ways that prevent feedback from being traced back to individuals. (This is the approach seasoned HR managers take with any investigation.)

Of course, it’s also important to manage these systems well, so insulting, abusive, confidential, or illegal information doesn’t flow through the company.

Removing Friction: The Importance of Simplicity

The ratings economy has taught us that great feedback comes when the process is incredibly easy. New feedback apps now let you mouse over a five-star box to provide a rating. Modern pulse surveys appear in your email and let you answer inline without clicking a link or opening a survey. Vendors are starting to attach their ratings to email or other systems, letting users give feedback in the flow of work.

Rather than multipage employee surveys, a simple question like “how are you feeling about work?” is enough to help managers gain immediate feedback and see trends. For example, the Japanese app Niko Niko (borrowed from Japanese manufacturing quality programs) lets employees convey their moods by giving their boss a “smile, flat, or frown” face at the end of each day. This simple tool gives managers an instant sense of how things are trending, and points to potential problem areas.

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Feedback is not just a fad, it’s a major trend. These new tools give leaders immediate feedback on the programs and actions they take. They unleash new ideas, open the door to new work practices, and help to engage employees.

But if you embark on this journey, get ready for some unfiltered information, be humble enough to listen, act on suggestions, and thank people for their input, regardless of its nature. And as a recent Wall Street Journal article points out, if you set rules for decency and confidentiality, people will respond.

—by Josh Bersin, principal and co-founder, Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP