The Complete Guide to the Best Employee Feedback Tools

Collecting and sharing regular and constructive criticism from and with employees is the best way to reduce employee turnover and improve employee performance and employee engagement.

However, business leaders often find it challenging to look for the proper feedback tools that suit their needs.

The good news is that there are dozens of options out there, each claiming to be better than the rest. 

But do you need different tools for collecting feedback from employees versus sharing constructive feedback with employees? And what are the benefits of using a specific kind of tool over others? 

We will guide you through the best options available out there. Find out which one suits you best.

🔄 6 Employee feedback tools examples

Zavvy

Employee enablement becomes a lot easier with the help of Zavvy. 

Zavvy's 360 feedback software allows you to:

• Enable multi-rater feedback.
• Easily set up a meaningful, growth-oriented 360-degree feedback process and eliminate tedious manual processes.
• Run more objective performance reviews.
• Gain valuable insights into employee engagement, performance and well-being.
• Have the possibility to collect anonymous feedback. (If anonymous feedback is not for you, no problem. Zavvy supports both anonymous and non-anonymous feedback.)
• Connect the dots between performance reviews and employee development.
• Calibrate results from competency-based, culture-based, and teamwork feedback.

Zavvy also has robust features for onboarding, training, and development strategies, be it in a remote, hybrid, or in-person setup.

You can create different surveys, like engagement and leadership development surveys. You can also gather employee feedback or department feedback, 360 feedback.

Bonusly

If you're looking for a robust recognition tool which is fun and personal, check out Bonusly. This tool lets you recognize peers and celebrate important milestones or events automatically.

Bonusly, allows you to easily recognize and celebrate the hard work of your colleagues, fostering a positive and appreciative work culture.

Typeform

Typeform is a feedback tool that gives flexibility in crafting and designing your surveys making them more engaging. Typeform therefore allows you to collect feeback in a fun way since, you can add photos and videos to your questionnaire and integrate them into several apps.

All in all, it's a handy tool that's got your back, no matter what you need it for. Don't settle for less when it comes to gather employee feedback from your employees, which is very valuable.

TINYpulse 

TINYpulse allows you to send out brief surveys with question types like scale surveys, yes or no surveys, or open-ended questions.

Apart from this, Tinypulse is also a recognition tool that lets employees send praises to one another. They can also send suggestions for the company to improve on anonymously.

➡️ If you want a more in-detail analysis of TINYpulse, as well as its top competitors, check out this guide: Tinypulse Alternatives: Find the Best Employee Feedback Tool for Your Needs.

Weekdone 

Weekdone allows you to track weekly plans and progress and share feedback with your employees. 

With a few clicks on its dashboard, you can easily set up your weekly plans and individual goals. With its user-friendly dashboard, setting up weekly plans and individual goals is a breeze. Plus, it's got a neat feature for celebrating  employees' achievements and promoting positive vibes through peer recognition.

Overall, it's a great tool that keeps things balanced and supports a productive work environment.

Reflektive

Reflektive is an employee feedback and recognition tool. It lets you send monthly, quarterly, or annual performance reviews.

It also outlines organizational goals and provides real-time feedback and recognition. It's a pretty useful tool for keeping everyone in the loop and celebrating those well-earned achievements.

⚙️ 5 Types of software tools for delivering feedback to employees

When delivering employee feedback, sharing insightful insights and suggestions on what they can improve further is essential. 

But there are many types of employee feedback. 

💡 Do you know which type of feedback makes the most sense to your organization and employees? Check out our analysis of which kind of feedback is most helpful in different situations.

There are several tools and strategies for delivering employee feedback:

• Goals tracking and management tools;
• Peer recognition tools;
• One-on-one meeting tools;
• Performance review software;
• 360-degree feedback software.

Goals tracking and management tools

Employees can set and keep track of their individual goals for their respective roles with the help of a goal-tracking and management tool.

You can use goals tracking and management tools for employee career development, business growth, team performance improvement, and organizational improvement.

Peer recognition tools

Peer recognition tools are software applications that allow users to recognize peers easily based on their work. 

Recognition tools let you and other team members recognize employees for their hard work. 

Recognition as a form of feedback signals positive traits that the workforce should continue doing. This kind of praise will boost employee engagement. 

One-on-one meeting tools

One-on-one meeting tools have a dual purpose. Apart from collecting employee suggestions and complaints, they can also be a means to provide regular employee feedback and guidance to employees.

Performance review software

Performance reviews are formal assessments that highlight an employee's strengths and weaknesses.

In a traditional performance appraisal, managers will review the performance of their direct reports. 

However, newer approaches to performance appraisals include multi-rater feedback. 

💡 Learn about 360 feedback vs. performance appraisal systems and discover the best option for your organization.

Performance review software tools allow managers to create performance reviews based on specific criteria. 

E.g., goal completion and OKRs like Google, culture fit like in the case of Zappos, and contribution to team performance like in the case of Cisco. 

360-Degree feedback software

A 360 approach to collecting feedback implies feedback coming from four key directions: 

1. from the reviewee themselves (self-review); 
2. from the reviewee's manager (downward feedback); 
3. from the reviewee's peers (peer review);  
4. if applicable, from the direct reports of the reviewee (upward feedback).

Given that employee feedback is collected from multiple sources, this method would be more time-consuming if applied manually. 

So, this is where a software solution comes in. 

A 360-degree feedback software is a tool that simplifies and automates gathering multi-rater (360-degree) feedback.

This software offers a wide range of key features, customization, and ease of use to ensure that the entire process runs smoothly and effectively. Check out our article 7 Tips for Giving Effective Feedback to Employees

🧰 8 Types of employee feedback tools for collecting employee insights

There are many types of tools to collect continuous feedback from employees. 

Employee feedback surveys are a very handy tool for this. They are an effective way to evaluate the atmosphere within your office. If you want to improve your employee retention rates, consider using these eight survey tools.

You can use a mix of the following strategies for your company:

• New employee onboarding surveys;
• Employee engagement surveys;
• Pulse surveys;
• Stay interviews;
• One-on-one meetings;
• Exit interviews;
• Employee suggestion box;
• Job satisfaction survey (JSS).

New employee onboarding surveys 

New employees will understand the company's culture during their onboarding. 

That's why conducting an employee onboarding survey with the right questions can give you a look at the pros and cons of your current recruitment strategies. A well functioning onboarding will probably also increase the employee satisfaction.

Employee engagement surveys 

A few weeks after conducting a new employee onboarding survey, you can use another feedback tool called an employee engagement survey. 

They shed some light on what they like and do not like about your employee enablement strategies and the overall corporate culture.

Pulse surveys

Other than one-time employee surveys, you can also conduct an employee pulse survey. They are brief regular surveys that help you gather employees' insights and opinions. 

This feedback tool will also give you a more consistent understanding of the company workforce.

Stay interviews

Apart from employee surveys, having stay interviews is another approach to help supervisors understand why their team members stay in the company. 

By gathering such data, you can identify and focus more on the positive aspects of your employee engagement tools.

One-on-one meetings

One-on-one meetings can go beyond just gather feedback from employees. Check out blog post about one-on-one meetings where we explore more in the topic and present real-world example.

Instead, this type of meeting can help you conduct check-ins and provide performance feedback and guidance to boost employee trust and engagement.

Exit interviews 

If you're conducting stay interviews, you'll get a complete picture by holding an exit interview. 

This type of meeting occurs right before an employee says goodbye to the company and gives you a better understanding of the things you need to improve on.

Employee suggestion box 

Placing a suggestion box around the workplace can instill a sense of trust and openness within the company. 

With this, employees can submit their suggestions and concerns anonymously.

Job satisfaction survey (JSS)

Most companies can benefit from a job satisfaction survey. 

Typically, companies carry out this kind of questionnaire annually and can assess whether your employees feel fulfilled at work.

One question that might come up is: should employee feedback be anonymous? 

🔍 We have collected five cases for and five against anonymous employee feedback, including some real-life company examples.

🏆 6 Benefits of using employee feedback tools 

Collecting, analyzing, and providing employee feedback benefits your company and people.

A positive feedback culture influences workplace relationships and improves operations and employee experience.

While selecting the best employee feedback tools is a daunting job, they have tons of benefits that come along with them. 

Anonymous feedback

The problem with honest feedback is that many employees may hesitate to express their concerns and suggestions due to lack of confidence. This is where employee feedback software tools come to the rescue. However, employee feedback software tools play a crucial role in addressing this challenge. These tools serve as a safe and confidential platform where employees can freely share their feedback without fear of repercussions.

By granting anonymity, these tools foster a more open, honest, and healthy work environment for everyone involved. It encourages employees to voice their opinions without fear of repercussions, ultimately leading to better communication and collaboration within the team.

Automation 

Companies traditionally gathered feedback through employee feedback surveys printed on paper. But modern feedback tools automate employee feedback to lessen the paperwork. 

They also provide a more centralized platform for getting suggestions from employees.

Reporting and dashboards

Most feedback tools are capable of generating direct reports. Not only do they highlight the weak and strong points of a team or a department, but they can also offer individual performance analysis.

By doing so, they make it easier for managers and supervisors to identify high-performing employees as well as those who may need additional training or support. They enable organizations to measure the efficacy of the changes implemented, demonstrating whether the strategies or processes have led to improvements.

Integration with different channels

Integrating feedback tools into softwares such as Notion, Teams and Slack can be highly beneficial to get continuous employee feedback and provide regular performance reviews to each employee. These types of integration streamlines the feedback loop, making it easier to monitor employee progress, identify areas for improvement, and recognize outstanding achievements. Additionally, these software platforms provide a centralized and accessible space for employees and managers to engage in constructive discussions, set goals, and track performance, fostering a culture of transparency, growth, and collaboration within the organization.

Pre-built templates

Most HR managers may not know the best ways to gather feedback from employees. Luckily, most feedback tools come with custom surveys to make your life easier.

➡️ Discover the best questions for employee self-evaluations.

➡️ You can also browse through our article about upward feedback to establish a consistent and effective feedback collection strategy for your leaders.

✊ And if you're searching for ready-to-use feedback cycle templates, we also have your back. Our feedback templates gallery covers everything from leadership, engagement, performance, and culture. 

Ease of implementing a 360-approach 

For a more holistic view of an employee's performance, you'd need 360 feedback from multiple people in the company. Then, you can distribute, collect, and analyze responses more efficiently. 

These tools also come with 360-degree feedback templates to help you, especially if you're starting setting up your feedback system. The 360-approach assist you with analyzing employee feedback.

📈 Zavvy, your effortless employee feedback tool

Plenty of feedback tools let you gather valuable data and provide regular feedback.

But Zavvy is more than a feedback software tool.

As an employee enablement suite, you can empower your employees to use feedback as a driver for change and growth.

With Zavvy, you can:

• Collect and share competency-based feedback.
• Link feedback and performance reviews to competency models, career paths, to enable transparency and motivate your people.
• Enable your employees to link feedback results to their growth plans. For example, they can create a new focus area for their growth plans directly from their feedback results.
• Gain a holistic view of your people's strengths and weaknesses with the advanced feedback analytics (spiderweb, skills matrices and much more).
• Bridge the gap between feedback and performance improvements with our extensive training library. Our learning specialists have curated hundreds of resources from multiple providers.

With Zavvy, you will offer your employees a more holistic and actionable experience. 

The best part? Our AI assistant will help admins and employees reach a new level of growth and performance.

Are your people struggling to define the steps towards achieving their development goals? Just ask Zavvy AI for help.

Learn how to drive performance and meaningful development for your people in a free 30 minutes demo.