Why employees no longer criticize the sysadmin: managing feedback using chatbot

A bit of background

Our company is engaged in the production of chemical additives for concrete. This may seem far from IT. However, when we decided to collect feedback from the staff, everything changed. Used the popular retrospective tool offered by Agile. But, we did not take into account the fact that this tool is more suitable for IT companies with an open, so-called “turquoise culture”. Having given our colleagues to express all their thoughts and complaints at a general meeting, we caused a whole wave of conflicts. The meeting showed that some departments do not work too well, someone seems to be detached, and someone constantly forgets to give documents. Discontent grew, it was necessary to act.

Heychar's Sad Way

Tools were few. They made a box of thanks, people wrote, but very rarely and 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 were interested in which departments work poorly and what needs to be changed. People simply did not want to criticize someone directly and began to avoid interpersonal conflicts. Therefore, it was decided to introduce a survey. The paper will endure everything, including our activity assessment survey. Each of the five departments, with 5 employees each, had to fill out at least 4 questionnaires. At the exit, we received a pile of papers, 100 questionnaires that had to be processed manually, one matrix and 10 hours of working time spent on filling. We were faced with the task of reducing the time for filling in the forms and automating their processing.

Our new chat bot

We decided to find the application or ask it to develop, but it turned out to be too expensive and long. Google forms, type form and other methods of collecting online did not allow to automatically create a matrix and quickly analyze the whole negative. As a result, our friends offered to try the online productivity platform. We quickly and simply registered, added employees and set up a regular survey system on the effectiveness of departments. All polls were sent in the form of a chat bot to telegrams, slack or mail. Employees rated departments and answered questions on the Start Stop Keep effective feedback system. They wrote for what they are grateful, and for which they dislike the accounting department, for example. After that, all collected feedback appeared in the platform in the form of informative graphs and helped to analyze their strengths and weaknesses.

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Moment of illumination

It turned out that employees very intuitively and sometimes vaguely understand the responsibilities of not only bookkeeping, but also their friend in the department. Many did not know that financial decisions related to the payment of bills are made by management, and the system administrator is not responsible for the purchase of new equipment. Departments often began to write thanks, and criticism has become more focused and rational. Employees established contact with each other, since the survey allowed to give feedback even to those departments with which there was a rare interaction. Finally, people understood what they lacked and which issues were best solved faster. Most importantly, we have changed our understanding of what feedback includes. Feedback is not only negative, which you pour out on your colleagues, but also encouragement, words of gratitude. You have to suggest how to improve this or that process, as well as to identify the positive aspects of the work of the department. On the screenshots, you can see that the marketing department praises the Moscow sales and accounting department.

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 conducting two surveys every month, and no one has yet been offended and tired. This is not surprising, since it is much easier to anonymously leave your negative comment in a chat than to say to someone in person. After the survey is completed, all data is collected in convenient statistics and sent to users. We have a schedule of points by department and a table of changes occurring from the survey to the survey, to see the position of the department relative to the rest and to determine the direction of development. Employees began to quarrel less, rejoice more often and love the accounting department and sysadmin more.

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In the comments to the article, please share your personal experience and tell you how feedback is collected in your company and what IT tools you use to optimize your workflow.