Capabilities required to achieve a vibrant feedback loop

Ability to measure specifics - effectiveness and experience within each team and business units

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

Individuals make a deliberate decision to contribute a critical thought piece to the collective intelligence data lake. The cause and effect topics can be very specific to the business process applicable to the team. People are completely free to express their specific experiences in measurable way. Inferring higher level themes from high specificity is a reliable and easy process.

Traditional Approaches

In most cases, people are asked leading questions. Free-form comments have limited value in allowing people to express themselves. Additionally, control questions make it difficult for people to feel safe. Typical survey results are relatively vague measurements. Accuracy can be low because up to 50% of people lie in their answers. Drawing specifics from such data would require another survey.

Ability to use same feedback loop on business line projects and activities without a dependency on HR. Ability for teams to setup own context

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

A single starting set of topics applicable to a specific team or project context is all you need to easily understand what is going inside the team, department or a project. No surveys and no HR overheads required.

Traditional Approaches

Traditional approaches require specially designed surveys. Overhead and dependencies force teams to work around constraints. The organization loses the ability to accumulate knowledge at scale.

Ablitity to leverage existing team processes, minimize overhead and interruptions while encouraging innovation and experimentation

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

The Live Pulse model integrates with existing patterns such as retrospective conversations. periodic stand-downs or snap voting events. Similarly, teams and individuals often come to some conclusions at the end of a problem discussion or at the end of a task. Lessons and conclusions are usually communicated through some kind of report or update. Neelix.IO provides an opportunity to capture these critical thinking observations and thus enrich collective intelligence.

Traditional Approaches

Each team develops some internal routines, even if they are consistent with broader initiatives. The insights are either scattered or completely lost. Traditional surveys are too generic and too late to recover those insights usefully.

Ability to minimize overheads and interruption

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

The Live Pulse model involves an event where a person “pushes” some critical thoughts into the team journal. This activity is most closely tied to the time when the thought is formulated, and is charged with motivation to contribute to collective learning. Although there is a relatively small request to push feedback, the overall benefit is positive. There is no need for surveys, and on a net-effort basis the team experiences fewer interruptions. At the same time, the information is readily available for management decisions, and there is no HR overhead to chase people down to participate in surveys.

Traditional Approaches

Surveys are always percieved as a late interruption, even if the number of questions is small. Time lag and low expectations of real change reinforce the feeling that the survey is an overhead expense with limited positive value. In addition, the actual effort of organizing surveys, following up with people, and processing the results can be significant.

Ability to maintain immutable history of data whilst also explaining the story behind data

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

One of the key benefits of the "team journal" concept is that data related to challenges, solutions and celebrations is pooled into a single data lake that is easily accessible for visualization and exploration. There is no need to maintain archives. Neelix.IO offers storytelling capabilities via Ai Assistant and real-time infographics that can depict full history, as well as via contextual "books".

Traditional Approaches

While some analytics solutions provide the ability to view line graphs of history, the actual storytelling is driven by archived reports.

Ability to reduce fatigue caused by surveys

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

The Live Pulse model offers the opportunity to have a data-driven feedback process that does not require any surveys. In practice, periodic snap voting is still a useful scheme. However, such voting is not an additional effort - the Live Pulse model simply ensures that the deeper sentiment insights that were being expressed are not lost.

Traditional Approaches

There are many initiatives and processes that organizations need to measure. Even if the measurement is done selectively, people are inundated with requests for surveys.

Currency of data that impacts decision-making

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

The Live Pulse model channels multiple sources of feedback that work together to ensure constant awareness: on-the-spot critical reflections when any employee has an opinion that needs to be expressed, weekly walk-ins, periodic retrospectives, periodic snap votes. The data lake is as relevant and powerful as the buy-in from employees. If the environment is unsafe, then absence of data is better than the dirty data resulting from general surveys. The data laje can be interrogated at will with the help of Ai assistant and interactive infographics.

Traditional Approaches

In practice, most organizations limit surveys to quarterly, semi-annually, or annually, and aggregate and simplify questions. This results in low value,

 latent benchmarks.

Capability to include multiple external partners, customers and internal departments within the feeback loop of a team or a project

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

The concept of a “team journal” in Neelix.IO is implemented as a consortium. This means that more than one internal or external team can participate in the feedback loop in a given context. Core objective is to create an enviornment of "Smart Transparency" without overhsaring. Each “team journal” can only be accessed by authorized participants, with a trusted leader able to navigate and aggregate experiences across multiple journals. It is also possible to create big picture dashboards across multiple journals. 

Traditional Approaches

Some traditional solutions allow you to invite specific individuals to participate in individual surveys. There are no role-based permissions.

Reputation Management (inward and external transparency of employee buy-in and culture)

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

Daring to publish normalized infographics powered by Live Pulse data can convey a firm’s real commitment to hearing the voice of its employees. In this context, absolute measurements are not so important. It is the trends that demonstrate sustainability efforts and other purpose-driven investments.

Traditional Approaches

Advertising sustainability and other commitments based on evidence from generic surveys has limited real-world value. Employees who have left the company have already experienced low impact from NPS and other generic surveys, and therefore view survey-based benchmarks with skepticism.

Ease of configuration management

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

The minimum setup required to enable the Live Pulse model is to create a space for team reflection, create a list of topics specific to the team context, and add access rights. Retrospective conversations and snap voting events leverage same configuration. 

Traditional Approaches

Developing and customizing surveys can require a significant amount of effort.

Ease of finding "my feedback" and tracking what organization is doing about it

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

Given that the "team journal" is a form of measurable and contextual diary, participants have self-service ability to navigate their own data and receive feedback from others.

Traditional Approaches

In most cases, people cannot navigate and view their own feedback. Submissions disappear behind the curtain of data processing.

Capability for Leadership to feed clarity and context directly into feedback loop process

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

Live Pulse is impactful because people see evidence of attention from leaders. Leaders engage in at least one of two core activities. First, they periodically check in and upvote some employee opinions—leaders have the opportunity to monitor specific topics of greatest interest. The frequency of spot-checking and upvoting is not important. Second, leaders publish periodic reflections in a “team journal” that is intended for company-wide consumption — this is an alternative to email newsletters and has a much greater impact in building connections between employees, leaders, and the company’s strategy. Periodic reflections from leaders provide clarity by relaying context and insight into how executives think. This appreciation increases the effectiveness of employee feedback because people have a better understanding of how they can contribute to leading the company to success.

Traditional Approaches

Leaders are usually invisible in standard surveys. Communication through newsletters and town halls is often perceived as top-down instructional interaction even if there is some opportunity to ask questions.

Capability for employee activists or team leaders to provide input into narrative linked to benchmarks

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

Benchmarks and infographics generated from any data points alone do not tell the whole story. Neelix.IO empowers experienced employees trusted by both management and grassroots to provide narrative to supplement the statistics depicted on dashboards. This approach helps leaders effectively triangulate data, amplifies employee voice, and builds systemic trust. Leaders are empowered to consider all perspectives independently. The result is better decisions with stronger buy-in. This isn't a scary proposition, since leaders often have a network of trusted people in the form employees who have demonstrated ability to think systemically. This approach simply makes that network transparent and accountable to the rest of the staff.

Traditional Approaches

In survey-based employee engagement systems, employee groups would have to fight and maneuver politically to be heard.

Positive use of Ai capabilities

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

The primary objective of AI should be to simplify the processing of numerous data points so that critical thinking provided by employees can be usefully represented in management decisions. Neelix.IO’s integration with AI provides the most human-centric results, as the source data is highly authentic. AI instructions are carefully curated to avoid hallucinations and guards against generation of suggestions not expressed by humans. The interactive implementation allows the manager to easily explore, drill down, and compare information between periods.

Traditional Approaches

In traditional surveys, AI is applied for statistical analysis and explaining the results according to a predetermined hypothesis. The generated propositions can easily diverge from what people actually think. This is a result of both generalized survey questions, people lying when answering, and the use of AI.

Availability of information on-demand for decision-making

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

The Live Pulse data model implemented by the Neelix.IO platform means that data is measurable and contextual at the moment it is pushed by employees. No post-processing is required. Data can be taken into account when making decisions at any point in time.

Traditional Approaches

Traditional survey initiatives require special effort to conduct and use the results in management decisions. Regular or on-the-spot management meetings are unlikely to have live evidence every time.

Trust in feedback loop and perception of its intent

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

Given that the Live Pulse feedback system allows employees to choose when to express their opinions, and given that the communication style is critical thinking expressed in their own words, people trust this feedback loop more than survey-based data extraction mechanisms.

Traditional Approaches

Employees find it hard to trust or buy into impact of generic surveys. This is one of reasons why "only 22% of companies obtain meaningful results from their employee engagement surveys.” (Enodo Global, 2022). Traditional surveys do not offer a freedom of expression.

Psychological Safety options for submitting feedback and ability to measure in real-time

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

The Live Pulse model implemented in Neelix.IO recognizes that both critical thinking and smart transparency are not achieved overnight. Humor and anonymity options are provided to lubricate the shared growth of maturity, overcome politics, and maintain the human-centered characteristics of feedback. In addition, people do not need to repeat opinions already expressed in "team journal", but can add their support via upvoting. This process unlocks the voice of the quiet majority and provides real-time insights into employee engagement without a need for any surveys.

Traditional Approaches

Many people feel that it is hard to stay truly safe in surveys even if they are advertised as anonymous. This feeling has many roots - which systems being used (especially HRIS), types of questions, knowing that team association exposes them, are other factors.

Immediate access to the latest feedback and critical thinking reflections from my team and other teams

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

The concept of a “team journal” ensures that all critical thought messages are available to the team in real time. People will only believe in the democratization of feedback if the information is immediately used for awareness and aligment. Neelix.IO offers moderation capabilities to system administrators to protect against malicious events.

Traditional Approaches

Traditional surveys result in feedback disappearing behind walls and summary reports.

Self-service ability to navigate history - overall and specific themes

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

Neelix.IO is inherently a real-time intelligence system, as all data points can be viewed by authorized participants at any time via interactive infographics. Any team member can check how things were before and how they have changed over time, without relying on gatekeepers and intermediaries.

Traditional Approaches

Survey-based solutions do not provide employees with the ability to navigate data points on their own.

Assurance that everyone sees the same data, and that outliers were not normalised away

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

All employee posts are posted in a transparent team journal and are visible to authorized participants. Strong opinions are part of the shared reflection and play an important role in reality checking. All informational components of Neelix.IO are equally accessible to employees and management - everyone sees the same data.

Traditional Approaches

Most surveys produce a sanitized summary. Traditional employee analytics and engagement systems have separate dashboards for managers. These approaches foster mistrust.

Ability to foster discourse

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

It is possible that some opinions may require balancing – in such cases, democratized peer reviews work better than management control. Truthful perspectives receive additional support and additional data points. Erroneous views are corrected by the team themselves without the need for intervention.

Traditional Approaches

Survey data may only be discussed in open forums within the limits permitted by the coordinator or manager.

Ability to combat lobbying by narrow interests or agenda hijacking

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

Similar to discourse facilitation, lobbying opinions are easily detected due to the inherent democratisation of the “team journal”. Transparency itself imposes a limitation on political lobbying, as opinion instigators are inadvertently forced to provide evidence for their proposal, and this evidence must be systematically reconcilable against common goals. The wider team and the silent majority have psychologically safe methods of balancing agenda hijacking through their own posts. When “team journal” data is used in business-as-usual process of inspect-and-adapt, only positive lobbying survives due to the expectation of evidence and transparency.

Traditional Approaches

Traditional surveys are methodological exercises in data collection. Quite majority usually remain silent. Positive toxicity and other agenda hijacking are common.

Capability for Leadership to participate in the feedback loop on terms equal with employees

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

The Live Pulse model treats leaders and managers like any other employee in the firm. This is a critical element in democratizing the feedback loop. When leaders post reflections in a “team journal,” employees learn about how leaders think and their personal perspectives. This insight helps employees engage with leaders in a way that is beneficial to both parties. The resulting healthy engagement fosters a form of equality that acknowledges neurodivergence and contextual backgrounds.

Traditional Approaches

Feedback provided by management after surveys often falls short of employee expectations. Avoiding at least some form of spin is hard for many organizations. As an alternative, companies often use Slack and Microsoft Teams channels in an attempt to encourage direct interaction between senior managers and employees. However, these exercises do not work at scale — employees may only have a partial understanding of how the leader thinks, and they will have a hard time engaging in useful discourse when the balance of power does not constrain critical thinking.

Transparency when onboarding new people into compamy culture. Exit interviews. Internal and external transparency (counterbalance to GlassDoor).

Neelix.IO Live Pulse Model

Evidence-based, reflective and democratised culture can be demonstrated to prospective candidates before they join. During onboarding, new employees gain a much quicker and deeper understanding of how things work by having access to the ‘team journal’. Daring and mature organisations can invite departing employees to submit ‘exit interviews’ in the form of posts to the ‘team journal’. A summary built from such an authentic pool of employee reflections demonstrates a commitment to creating a great workplace culture.

Traditional Approaches

Organizations that double down on surveys expose themselves to the risk of potentially biased opinions expressed on platforms like Glassdoor.