If a relationship has become truly broken, it's unlikely our system is going to fix it. In that case, you might be right that the person should seek employment elsewhere.
But there are many scenarios by which the relationship can be improved by anonymous feedback. Keep in mind that a lot of the feedback managers tell us they get are based on feedback about systems, tools used, company policies and the like.
We've built (and are building) a follow-up mechanism to try and ensure good feedback doesn't go ignored and that the downvoting you speak of is actually transparent in the system.
If you try our service, you'll see that the feedback is in fact both ways. Managers can reply, ask follow-up questions, mark the issue as resolved and so on. Likewise, the employee can reply and do the same.
Not everyone wants to leave or feels they can leave (in this economy). They want a mechanism to try and fix something without fear of retribution. That's what we're trying to provide.
Of course, this is nothing new, given how easy it is to create a throw-away e-mail account.
The point is to make the whole thing as little like a last resort and as much like an opt-in continuous process, no matter how it is initiated, as possible.
First, if you need to use a service like this to get stuff across to your boss, this is my feedback to you:
Fix yourself (specifically the issue you have bringing stuff up with your boss) or (if they're the reason you feel like you can't talk to them about something) find a new boss. No amount of anonymous feedback is going to fix a poor relationship with your boss. And it's probably not going to fix the other stuff, either.
Anonymous feedback is terrible:
- It's too easy for a manager to disregard or mentally down-vote as being from a bad apple or someone they don't see eye-to-eye with.
- Without being able to put your feedback in context of who you are, where you're coming from, and what your relationship is with them, it could also make what you're saying a lot more hurtful than you mean it to be. For example, they might think it was from someone else. And maybe your feedback, coming from someone else they work more closely with, would really hit a nerve for some reason.
- It also seems unthoughtful to deliver anonymous feedback to someone without giving them some way of addressing the feedback, perhaps giving you some feedback of their own, should they think the feedback was flawed in some way.
Instead, we need to be having real conversations. If those aren't working, maybe you're in the wrong place.