The comments discussion module helps managers and HR professionals to obtain more details from employees and engage them in finding solutions.
When an employee submits comments in a survey, users who have access to that employee's results can respond to a comment directly through Amélio.
Typically, this will be the employee's manager and users who have access to results across the entire company, such as HR professionals or executives.
How the module works
On the Comments page, the user with access to the results can hover over a comment with their mouse and click on Reply to this employee to enter their response.
The employee will receive a notification in the application that will redirect them to a discussion thread based on the comment/question as displayed below.
The employee, their manager, and any other user who has access to the discussion thread can add a response at any time in the thread.
To access the comments page, click on the Results menu and then on the Comments sub-menu.
Visibility of discussion thread replies
To understand who sees the replies in the comment discussion thread, let's first explain who sees employee comments in a survey.
Visibility of comments
Comments work the same way as general result access, provided that the user has the permission to View comments in their user role.
For example, a manager will see the comments of their employees reporting to them. A director with multiple managers reporting to them will see the results of their direct team as well as all employees reporting to the managers under their responsibility.
Administrators and HR managers will see comments for the entire organization.
Reminder
If you have used the answer choice "Other" in one of the questions, access to comments must be activated in Permissions so that managers, for example, can see the answers indicated.
If this is not activated, they will only have access to the proportion of respondents who have chosen "Other".
Visibility of comment discussion thread
The comment discussion thread works the same way as the visibility of comments. In other words, a user with access to an employee's comment will also have access to the discussion thread on that comment only if their user role allows them to reply to comments.
If a user does not have this permission (see Enable the module section), they will not see the discussion thread.
Here are some example cases:
Only HR managers have permission to respond to comments: All HR managers with access permission to comments will be able to see the discussion thread and respond to it, with each responding under their own name since only the anonymous employee who posted the comment remains anonymous; managers will not see the discussion thread between the employee and the HR managers who participated in the discussion.
HR managers and managers have permission to respond to comments: All users with access to the anonymous employee's results who posted the comment will see the discussion thread and be able to respond to it under their own name; HR managers will then see the discussions between managers and their employees, and vice versa. Note: managers from other teams will not see discussion threads when the employee does not belong to their team.
Notification modes
When a new response is posted, all participants involved in the discussion will be notified in the following ways:
They will receive an instant notification in the application.
They will receive an email in the morning summarizing all new responses from the previous day (last 24 hours), but typically, few emails will be sent since there will only be new responses from time to time.
Note: If employees don't have access to the application, the link that will be sent to them via email will direct them to a page that can be accessed without authentication, and they can still participate in the conversation without having to log in.
People who have participated in a discussion thread include the employee who initiated the comment and anyone who has added a response to the comment, whether it's the employee's direct manager or an HR representative who has joined the conversation, for example.
Confidentiality of the discussion thread
The employee remains confidential at all times in the discussion thread. They can identify themselves by providing their name in one of their responses if they wish.
Other participants are never anonymous.
Flexibility of the module
Amélio allows for great flexibility in the roles of your users, and this module has been designed to allow you to select the users to whom you want to give access. You could choose to give access to the module only to HR managers, practice directors, or give access to all managers.
When in doubt, start with restricted access at the beginning and then expand access to the module when you consider that the discussion will be constructive between employees and managers.
We always encourage open discussion during team meetings to discuss Amélio's results.
To define your organizational approach and strategy for using this module, see this article on best practices related to the comment response feature: Defining your comment response strategy.
Activating the module
This module is disabled by default and you need to activate it when you want to use it.
Prerequisites
To ensure that the module works in your organization, certain options need to be enabled:
The users you want to allow to respond to comments must have a user role with the following permissions:
Viewing comments
At least one of these permissions: View results of employees reporting to the manager, View results of the entire organization
During a standard account opening, managers and HR managers have these accesses by default.
Next, to activate this module, go to:
Go to Administration and then to Permissions. This page displays the list of available roles in your organization. Identify the roles for which you want to give access and repeat the steps below for each of them.
On the line of the role you want to modify, click on the down arrow to display more options and then click on edit.
In the Mobilization section, check the Respond to comments permission.
Click Update.
Users with the role you modified can now respond to comments.
Important! Do not give this permission to employees. By default, when a user receives a response to a comment they left during a survey, they will have access to the discussion thread linked to that comment.
Filtering comments
With Amélio, you have the option to filter comments by user or manager responses(while maintaining anonymity!). This provides a convenient feature for human resources and account administrators, enabling them to view comments according to your specific needs.
