Why employees no longer criticize the sysadmin: managing feedback via chatbot
A little background
Our company is engaged in the production of chemical additives for concrete. It may seem far from IT. However, when we decided to collect feedback from employees, everything changed. Used the popular retrospective tool that Agile offers. But, we did not take into account the fact that this tool is more suitable for IT companies that have an open, so-called "turquoise culture." Letting our colleagues express all their thoughts and complaints at the general meeting, we caused a wave of conflicts. The meeting showed that some departments do not work too well, someone seems detached, and someone constantly forgets to give documents. Discontent grew, it was necessary to act.
The sad path of eychara
There were few tools. They made a box of thanks, people wrote, but very rarely and a little. We decided to approach the issue systematically and involve all employees. We wanted the best, but it turned out as always. At meetings, we asked which departments worked poorly and what needed to be changed. People simply did not want to criticize anyone directly and began to avoid interpersonal conflicts. Therefore, it was decided to introduce a survey. The paper will endure everything, including our endorsement survey. Each of the five departments, 5 employees each, had to fill out at least 4 questionnaires. At the exit, we got a pile of papers, 100 questionnaires that had to be processed manually, one matrix and 10 hours of working time spent filling out. Our task was to reduce the time required to fill out questionnaires and automate their processing.
Our new chat bot
We decided to find the application or ask it to be developed, but it turned out to be too expensive and long. Google forms, type form and other methods of collecting online did not give the opportunity to automatically make a matrix and quickly analyze all the negative. As a result, our friends suggested trying an online productivity platform. We quickly and simply registered, added employees and set up a system of regular surveys on the effectiveness of departments. All polls were sent as a chatbot to telegrams, slack or by mail. Employees rated departments and answered questions about the effective Start Stop Keep feedback system. They wrote for which they were grateful, and for which they did not like the accounting department, for example. After that, the entire collected feedback appeared on the platform in the form of informative charts and helped to analyze their strengths and weaknesses.
Moment of insight
It turned out that employees very intuitively and sometimes vaguely understand the responsibilities of not only accounting, but also their friend in the department.
Many did not know that financial decisions related to paying bills are made by management, and the system administrator is not responsible for the purchase of new equipment. Gratuities began to be written to departments more often, and criticism became more focused and rational. Employees made contact with each other, as the survey allowed us to give feedback even to those departments with which there was a rare interaction. Finally, people realized what they lacked and what issues are best addressed faster.
Most importantly, we have changed our understanding of what feedback includes. Feedback is not only the negative that you pour on your colleagues, but also encouragement, words of gratitude. You must offer how you can improve this or that process, as well as identify the positive aspects of the department. On the screenshots you can see that the marketing department praises the Moscow sales department and accounting.Happy end
Now a survey of five departments takes a maximum of 15 minutes and is processed automatically. The company has already used Slack for communication, which probably also seems uncharacteristic for our industry. Those who for some reason do not like Slack use telegrams or mail.
We are now conducting two surveys every month and no one has yet been offended or tired. This is not surprising, since anonymously leaving your negative comment in the chat is much easier than telling someone in person. After completing the survey, all data is collected in convenient statistics and sent to users. We have a graph of scores by department and a table of changes that occur from survey to survey to see the position of the department relative to the rest and determine the direction of development. Employees began to quarrel less, to rejoice more often and to love accounting department and system administrator more.In the comments to the article, I ask you to share your personal experience and tell us how feedback is collected in your company and what IT tools you use to optimize your workflow.
