New site lets you tell your boss anything, anonymously

Offering feedback, even if it's done in constructive ways, can be a touchy process in a high-pressure environment. British Columbia-based social startup Happiily, however, is trying to make it a bit less fraught.

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The company's new site, Tell Your Boss Anything, is the modern age's equivalent of the old suggestion box - employees can provide anonymized feedback to their managers, while managers who want to institute the system can invite workers to use the service. Manager accounts are available for $20 each.

Naturally, the product includes stringent filtering mechanisms to prevent it from being used as a simple medium for abuse. What's more, says founder Tom Williams, Tell Your Boss Anything will soon turn the suggestion box into a source of real insight into what's going on in the office.

"The Tell Your Boss Anything product will get features rolled out in the next few weeks that will have a little bit more insights around 'what are the issues that are getting the most feedback?'" he says. "We'll be doing some informatics and dashboard roll-up stuff."

The site is a small spin-off of Happiily's main product, a set of web applications that allows businesses to track mood and gain a sense of what their employees are thinking about. That service is priced on a per-seat basis, and - for anonymity reasons - is primarily aimed at businesses with more than a few dozen employees.

The genesis of Happiily, according to Williams, occurred when the team was working on a system that would allow conference attendees to rate each other in terms of professional clout. They quickly realized that the project could be suited for day-to-day use, superseding yearly or quarterly surveys as core employee feedback mechanisms.

Email Jon Gold at jgold@nww.com and follow him on Twitter at @NWWJonGold.

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