Small Improvements is great for official performance reviews and gathering 360 degree feedback, but official cycles may be too infrequent for team members craving instant feedback. So we added the ability to send quick kudos and peer feedback throughout the year as well.
All these messages can be public or private, depending on the purpose and on your company culture. This allows you to give continuous feedback and recognition, so your employees can learn and grow all the time!
Writing and sharing messages
It couldn’t be easier. Simply use the global ‘+Create’ button and choose to praise someone, take a note, or give peer feedback.
From here you can choose a coworker to write about, enter a message, and determine who should be able to see it. Save the message and you’re done!
When you write and share a message with a coworker, they will automatically get an email notification. Also, if you decided to restrict visibility of a message to certain people, they will be notified by the system since we assume they will want to learn about that message.
A nice word goes a long way
Many workplaces suffer from a lack of positive feedback. Be the change you seek, and start giving kudos to the people who deserve them!
Another great thing about the messaging system is how it’s integrated with the other modules of Small Improvements – when you go to write a performance review or give 360 feedback, you’ll be able to see all the messages you received and wrote during the time period under review, right there on the page.
Your manager and 360 degree reviewers will also be able to see feedback you’ve received and written (except any confidential messages, of course).
If you use the system frequently, this will quickly become the through-line for your conversations around performance for the whole year!
Show approval quickly
You can always reply to a message by adding a comment, and if you want to quickly show approval of a good idea or insightful praise, you can click to “like” a message or comment:
(below is a animated gif, watch the whole loop!)
Anonymous feedback
In some cases you may want to post a message or give feedback anonymously. No problem. Only HR representatives will be able to unveil your identity, e.g. in case someone writes inappropriate things.
But even HR are kept in check: A notification is sent to the author each time an anonymous message is unveiled. This keeps things in balance.
And anonymous peer review feedback can be improved on or questioned. Whoever was authorized to see feedback can chime in.
Restrict your messages
We’ve learned that peer praise is usually public, and users typically provide improvement suggestions privately. But it’s really up to your company to set the rules, anything is possible.
Restrictions also allow you to take an informal note or log your one-on-one meeting minutes without sharing them at all. Not exactly continuous feedback- But absolutely crucial if you want to rely on this feedback later (if only visible to you), or communicate with another team member about someone else in the tool- So they can rely on this candid feedback at a later date.
Here’s an example of a private note in a 1:1 Meeting:
You can also make a message entirely private by selecting “Just you” on the creation screen:
