Even if she promised anonymity, some workers didn't trust the process.

"It just never had consistency and objectivity," said Errett, who runs the 75-person San Francisco e-commerce hair care company Madison Reed.

So she called in outsiders for help.

A new breed of human resources start-ups is cropping up to help companies figure out how their employees feel. By building and licensing software that has the specific purpose of measuring employee engagement, they allow companies to do snap polls, target specific teams and demographic groups, offer employees anonymity and complaint hotlines, and in some cases allow whistleblowers to bypass C-suite executives and go straight to the board of directors.

“You’ve now got tools such as Strava and Fitbit for tracking your health, but where’s the Fitbit for your company?” said Jim Barnett, co-founder and chief executive of Redwood City startup Glint, whose software analytics tools are used by companies to measure employee engagement.

Errett said she gained more insight into what her employees were thinking and feeling in three years using Glint. In addition to the snap surveys and polls of specific teams, it offers a heat map of the company showing at a glance which units have the most complaints and which managers have low approval scores — allowing her to drill down on why.

Read Full Article