About anonymous chat

We have always encouraged openness and transparency in &frankly, and “comments” have been a way for employees to express their thoughts beyond the question template. We’ve decided to take one step further to make sure that the employees feel heard, by introducing Anonymous Chat.

Anonymous Chat give employees and leaders a way to talk about the question and its comment anonymously. This can allow the employee to be more frank, who might otherwise feel uncomfortable talking about it in the open. For managers, it will enable them to find out more about a particular comment. It can be to clarify the meaning of the comment, or to discuss the issue with the team member.

The individual who submitted the original comment will always be anonymous, while the HR admin or Manager will be identified during the initiation process and while the chat continues.

In the Company Settings page, you can enable or disable the chat feature for the whole organization. In order to enable Anonymous chat, an HR admin must be assigned. An individual who has role=administrator in &frankly can be selected to be the HR admin, then employees will see this person as an option to address their chat to, while chatting.

To activate it, you go to Settings > Company settings and scroll down to Anonymous chat:

The HR admin can see an overview of all chats created in the organization, but the HR-admin can only read and answer those chats addressed directly to the HR-admin. The HR-admin can initiate a chat from all comments they can see in the result views. 

In the settings, it's also possible to:

1. Select to whom the people answering the question can address their chat. An option can be selected from the following

   • Allow initiating chat to both HR admin and direct group owner

   • Allow initiating Anonymous chat to only HR admin

   • Allow initiating Anonymous chat to only direct group owner

2. Enable/Disable direct group owners from initiating a chat while looking at comment results

There may be several reasons why you can’t initiate an Anonymous chat.

• The Administrator of the organization first needs to enable the feature.
• There must be either an HR admin or a Manager (direct Group Owner) you can address the anonymous chat to, otherwise you will not be able to initiate a chat.
• The Company Settings decides if employees are allowed to initiate a chat while answering a question, and if an HR admin/Manager can initiate a chat while looking at result comments. Please check with your HR Admin to make sure you have been enabled to initiate a chat in the organization

Once a chat has been created, it can be found under Results > Anonymous Chat page. If a Group Member initiates a chat while answering, the HR Admin or Manager will only be able to see that chat once the pulse has closed, and the final results are available.

No matter who initiated the chat, the individual who left the original comment will be able to see their chat in all states, while the “addressed to” HR Admin or Manager (Group Owner) will only see Open and Closed chats.

There are 4 states a chat can be in:

1. Pending: The state after an employee initiates an anonymous chat while answering a question, but the comment/chat is not yet visible to the addressed to HR Admin or Manager, since the final results aren’t available yet. In the Pending state, the person who initiated the chat will be able to send messages, which will become visible if and when the chat becomes “Open”.

2. Open: When the final results are available and the original comment/chat initiated while answering is visible to the addressed to HR Admin or Manager. Or if the HR Admin or Manager starts the anonymous chat from the comments results.

3. Closed: When the addressed to HR Admin or Manager changes the status from Open to Closed manually. If the chat is closed, it will no longer be possible for participants to send messages to each other within the chat. The HR admin or Manager of the chat can re-open the chat if necessary.

4. Hidden: When the final results are available, but the original comment/chat is hidden due to scheduling visibility or the integrity framework. Only the individual who submitted the original comment will be able to see the chat if it’s hidden.

In addition, in the web version of &frankly, the HR Admin will be able to see an overview of all chats created in the organization. However, HR Admins can only read -and send messages in those chats addressed to the HR-admin. 

There are 3 people who can initiate a chat.

1. First, an HR Admin is someone assigned to be the main contact for employees who want to initiate a chat to HR. An individual who has role = Administrator in &frankly can be assigned as the HR Admin. The HR Admin can initiate chat from all comments they have visibility to.
   
   
2. Secondly, a direct Group Owner can initiate a chat based on a comment result from their direct group members.
   
   Both the HR Admin and Group Owner will be able to initiate a chat while viewing the “Comments” for question results in the Dashboard or in the Individual Questions page. If the chat feature is enabled in the account, a chat button will be shown next to each comment. By clicking on this button, HR admin and direct Group Owners will be able to initiate a chat to the person who wrote that comment.
   
3. Thirdly, Group Members can initiate a chat while answering a question. If the chat feature is enabled, people will see a toggle to initiate a chat based on the comment they submit for a question. Group Members can select either the HR admin or their Manager/Group Owner to initiate a chat to. If there are multiple Managers/Group Owners, the Group Member can chose one. Depending on the company settings, it can be possible to select only the HR Admin or only a Manager.
    

If the assigned HR Admin is also a direct Group Owner, that person will only be shown as an HR admin in Anonymous Chat.