Hi HN, it’s Kaz. I’m a dev/solo founder here with my startup TeamSays [0], which is an anonymous feedback channel for improving workplace experience. Put simply, it’s like a founder/HR manager’s always-on sidekick.

The product idea grew out of personal experience in startups and ~600 employee org, and me learning the shocking stats of the costs for replacing talent.

To those of you who have a job: replacing you would cost your employer ~20% of your annual salary [1]. If you’re highly specialized (which is very likely) it can cost up to 4x your annual salary [2]. So, keep that in mind when you negotiate your compensation or work-life balance.

Here’s how TeamSays works:

1. Once you create an account you get a link to a minimal chat-like UI, you only have to create categories and questions. 2. Then you share link with your team announcing a new channel for tracking feedback/issues. 2. Team members visit and share something, you can then see their conversations get analyzed, and turned into a positive or negative report that becomes visible in the dashboard. 3. That’s it. Nothing else to do other than update or remove questions/categories over time — minimal maintenance. 4. Get weekly/monthly reports on the state of positive/negative reports and take action.

Over time you can track progress of issues as active questions get rotated, so on a long-term timeframe you can derive progress stats and see where things went right/wrong.

Essentially, it’s a channel for your team members to express their true concerns and opinions (possibly in explicit manner that otherwise wouldn’t be possible), which simplifies work of HR department if you have one or becomes one if you don’t. Personal conflicts, stress/anxiety, or simply not feeling safe/confident enough are possible reasons to have this channel.

The chat is fully anonymous and it does not provide any way to identify participants other than a simple browser-based ID.

I’ve personally experienced bad managers in otherwise good enough organizations. As a remote team member building personal connection for transparency is hard. We all know the old saying “people quit managers, not companies” which might not be 100% true [3] but I do find it to be true enough to base TeamSays around it.

Obviously, TeamSays is not for every team/organization out there but for those that value transparency and simply want to make sure they have a safe, and private channel that is remote-friendly for their colleagues, clients, or employees I believe it’s a good tool in the arsenal and I hope you consider giving it a go. Improving team experience, and providing space where everyone can truly share their concerns and keep their privacy/anonymity. Even a simple fact of sharing issues could be beneficial if there is no alternative at all.

Here are some stats: 1/3 of modern day workers wouldn’t accept a job if they didn’t agree with the views of the leadership [4]; managers must use meaningful interactions to build engagement [5] as remote employees’ connection to their organization’s purpose is declining.

Lots of metrics point to a high expectations of modern day workplace, and I’m here to offer help to HR process — there is a free 7-day trial, and setting it up should take only a few minutes. I made sure TeamSays supports numerous languages, and am doing my best to add more.

Please share your thoughts. Thank you.

[0]: https://teamsays.com [1]: https://www.scribd.com/document/112707536/There-Are-Signific... [2]: https://lrshrm.shrm.org/blog/2017/10/essential-elements-empl... [3]: https://www.cultureamp.com/blog/biggest-lie-people-quit-boss... [4]: https://www.randstad.com/workmonitor/ [5]: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-...