The Best Feedback Tracking Software for HR Professionals: Take the Power of Feedback to the Next Level with These Apps and Tools

What is your business’s most valuable asset? You might be tempted to say your product/service portfolio, or maybe the customer data that allows you to make informed decisions. You could say it’s your customers themselves; after all, you have no business without them.

All of those are important ingredients of success, but what we’re talking about is far more critical: your people.

Your employees put in the time and effort necessary to create a business. Just as you would have no company without customers, you likewise wouldn’t be anywhere without your employees. As such, it makes sense to invest in them and help them learn, grow, and develop. Doing so can offer some pretty potent benefits, including:

• Improved employee retention

• Reduced turnover

• Reduced cost of hiring and onboarding

• Improved expertise across the entire organization

• Strengthened relationships with repeat customers

The key to cultivating strong employees is to provide actionable feedback at all times. Of course, feedback is tricky. No one likes to feel that they’re being criticized or that they’re being assessed the same way you would a piece of office equipment, like a printer.

Not convinced about how essential ongoing, accurate feedback is? Check out these statistics from Zippia:

• 65% of employees actively want more feedback.

• Regular feedback results in a turnover rate 14.9% lower than in organizations that do not provide feedback.

• 69% of employees say that recognition of their efforts through feedback would make them work harder.

• 98% of employees report feeling disengaged when they do not receive feedback.

• 75% of employees receiving feedback say it is valuable.

• 68% of employees who receive consistent feedback report feeling fulfilled at work.

Feedback could be the perfect tool for growth and development. Unfortunately, so many people struggle to take feedback and even more struggle to give it, which creates a toxic cycle of employee progress tracking and reporting that is ineffective, at best. Fortunately, there are several tools available today that can change that. 

How to give better feedback

In addition to investing in the best tools for feedback and employee management, there are things that you can do to deliver better in the moment and provide people with information and insight that they can use. It starts with realizing that this, again, isn’t a judgment session. You’re not “grading” your employee like you would a student. You’re identifying their capabilities, shortcomings, and overall job performance to help them improve and perform better, which will thereby help your company perform better.

Put simply, you’re trying to help employees improve. When you’re giving the right feedback in the right ways, the process goes a lot more smoothly.

1. Ask if it’s wanted

Feedback is often seen as advice and unsolicited advice is rarely welcome. If your organization doesn’t have a stated policy of consistent feedback – say regular one-on-ones held monthly – then your feedback may be going astray no matter how well-intentioned. If the direct report doesn’t ask for feedback and you don’t have a policy in place that prepares them for this information, ask if they want it. Most people will say yes.

2. Specificity is your friend

For feedback to be actionable, it must be specific. Don’t say things like, “I feel like you need to tighten up.” That’s ambiguous. Tell the employee emphatically what you’re commenting on and what steps you feel need to be taken to change the situation. The same goes for positive feedback. Don’t say, “You’re doing a great job, keep it up.” Your employee doesn’t know what they’re doing right to warrant the feedback. Instead, be specific. For instance, “Hey, great job with the weekly strategy sessions. The stakeholders are loving your ideas.”

3. Be empathetic

Are you giving critical feedback? If so, pause before delivering it. Understand that receiving feedback that exposes serious gaps in knowledge, training, or performance can be a staggering blow to any employee. Put yourself in their shoes and look at the situation from that perspective. Tailor your feedback delivery so that it’s constructive while identifying the core issue and providing guidance to move forward and rectify the situation.

4. Privacy is key

All feedback should be private between the manager and the employee. It should never be shared with anyone else who does not have a proven need to know. For instance, HR employees might need to know the nature of the feedback to record it in the employee’s file, but it should never be shared with team members. That also means all feedback should be given in private, never in public.

5. Leave room for feedback on your feedback

Giving feedback isn’t a one-way flow of information. You need to leave room for feedback from the employee. Perhaps they’re aware of mitigating factors that you aren’t. Maybe there’s another underlying issue at work. Keep yourself open to their feedback and actively listen to what they have to say. This is a conversation between two people, not a superior giving orders to or reprimanding a subordinate.

6. Track your feedback

You can’t give feedback and then kick back and forget about it. You need to track it overtime. This ensures that you’re able to chart improvements and setbacks, determine how an employee is performing, and much more. That requires the right processes and tools – like feedback tracking software for HR professionals.

Not sure where to start when choosing your software? We’ve got you covered. Explore ourlist of the best HR tracking software below.

The best feedback-tracking tools

The average new hire costs a company around $4,000. Unless you’ve got change lying around to spare, you’re going to want to invest in your existing employees as much as you can. Part of that comes with feedback tracking software like the top tools discussed below.

15Five

This platform was designed based on the simple premise of saving time. Employees take just 15 minutes to answer a survey and then managers can review it within five minutes and generate feedback. However, it’s also got a lot of other great features worth considering. This tool is designed to help empower employees and unlock their full potential.

With 15Five, you can create custom surveys, use prompts, set authorizations review permissions, and share information with others in the organization. You can also create groups and teams, help employees set and track goals and accomplishments, and keep people accountable, all within the app. Trend tracking is part of the reporting suite, and you’ll also enjoy that the platform is backed by the science of psychology to help you create better teams and employees that thrive in your company.

TinyPulse

When you want to keep tabs on employee engagement and culture while also tracking performance and feedback, this tool has what you need. The TinyPulse platform makes it easy to set up your questions and surveys, sending out one question each week with multiple answer options and question styles to choose from.

Employee feedback is presented anonymously in some cases, allowing others to feel safe sharing and collaborating. It’s not as focused on generating reviews and constructive criticism, but it is another tool that your company can use to make sure that employees are all on the right track. It’s also a great way to get a gauge on whether people’s performance is a company issue or a person alone.

Contact Monkey

Contact Monkey is a versatile feedback tool well-suited to the needs of small businesses, but scalable so it will grow with any organization. You can create surveys, embed them in employee emails, and more. It offers native ChatGPT integration, too, for easier content creation.

One of the best things about Contact Monkey is that it allows you to track feedback in a wide range of ways. Choose from star ratings to emojis and everything in between. This helps ensure that employees aren’t just receiving feedback, but that they can provide their own, while also making the process more enjoyable.

Culture Amp

Culture Amp offers a host of tools for company culture surveys, employee pulse tracking, and performance reviews. You can even review data based on the employee lifecycle, demographics, and time frame. There are impressive reporting features included, as well, and account managers will have access to set up access for users and managers as needed.

This app lets you create surveys for individuals and teams and send specific employees and managers the surveys and results, based on single-user exceptions and allowances. The app is easy to use and takes just seconds to get started and will help your company track and give better feedback all around.

Officevibe

Officevibe helps you gather specific insights and figure out where you can find opportunities for improved efficiency, as well as creating dialogue among them to help improve the company as a whole. The tool even makes it easy to package your results for easy sharing throughout the organization and of course, you can choose between custom surveys and pre-loaded prompts.

The Officevibe app also includes custom polling and employee engagement survey options, from how often you send them to what kind of questions they contain, and more. You will learn what people need and be able to help provide them with feedback, as well, so that everyone can perform better and work toward a more successful future.

CultureMonkey

The second “monkey” related tool on our list (no relation to Contact Monkey), CultureMonkey is about more than just tracking feedback. As you might guess from the name, it’s purpose-built to drive engagement while measuring and improving your workplace culture. You can track, gather, and analyze feedback while also giving feedback to employees.

If you’re looking for a tool that can help you create a more equitable workplace and change your culture, this is a great option. It brings plenty of customization options to the table, as well as over 50 templates and HRMS integration. You can have anonymous conversations to encourage honest feedback, send employee surveys, access quick insights, and more all through a central dashboard.

Impraise

Impraise offers a full-featured solution for employee reviews, feedback, and praise. The platform allows managers to customize the review process or use standard built-in resources, as well as to request feedback on their performance from their best reports. The tool offers a unique Key Strengths dashboard that allows managers and employees to list the skills, track skill acquisition and proficiency, and more.

With Impraise, you can go beyond just tracking feedback to providing your team members with a roadmap for their professional development. It offers several intuitive features and even lets you set user access permissions and managerial accounts. Share reports and insights with other company leaders and employees, and help employees get better at continuous improvement.

Reflektive

With Reflektive, managers will be able to conduct monthly, quarterly, or yearly performance reviews, set up team and company goals, and even allow employees to offer feedback to their coworkers. You can create morale polls and allow employees to check in and tell you how they’re feeling, and you can create individual goals and tracking tools, as well.

Reflektive is an all-inclusive performance tracking tool that makes it easy to help your employees excel. It offers enhanced analytics and engagement tools and increases performance, engagement, and retention among companies who use the software. You can engage people with recognition tools and features and measure the results together so that it’s a team effort.

Jotform Survey Maker

Jotform Survey Maker helps you create surveys with its easy drag-and-drop interface. By using one of their 280+ survey templates, you can make collecting feedback engaging and unique to your brand. Just add your questions, set up conditional logic, and share your custom surveys with just a link to start gathering data from your clients or customers.

Collecting job satisfaction surveys can be time-consuming and is easily one of the hardest parts of being an HR professional. But by utilizing Jotform’s Form Analytics feature, your company can analyze the data they collect and reveal important insights about your employees. You can have access to all of Jotform’s features for absolutely free.

Don’t get stuck in the negative feedback loop

With a better understanding of how critical it is to provide actionable feedback and to allow employees to provide feedback to the organization, it’s also time to ensure that they have the tools they need for success. The feedback tracking software we’ve discussed will get you part of the way there, but you also need to ensure that your people have the time to focus on what they do best.

When you enlist the assistance of the dedicated team at Smith.ai, you can streamline mundane tasks, free your team to focus on mission-critical tasks, and let us handle all the calls and messages while you focus on customer service and culture building.

Of course, we can do so much more than act as your 24/7 answering service. From answering overflow calls during peak times to helping with scheduling, sales development, after-hours phone answering, lead vetting, and email and SMS follow-up, we provide the support that you and your customers need.  

You can also call us at (650) 709-2947, drop us an email at hello@smith.ai, or schedule your free consultation right now.