The design philosophy behind Friday Pulse

Effective design aligns with specific goals grounded in real-world understanding. Research has shown that psychological safety is fundamental to workplace wellbeing. This is because wellbeing isn’t just a personal matter; it emerges from our interactions with others. Therefore, a key design objective for Friday Pulse is to protect individual privacy while also encouraging team interaction and collective action.

How Friday Pulse works

Friday Pulse is designed with privacy and transparency at its core:

Privacy features:

• Individual responses to numeric questions are kept confidential
• Participation, or lack thereof, remains private

Transparency features:

• Team scores are visible to all users in those teams, including the scores of the parent team/s users are in, within a team hierarchy
• This works all the way up the team hierardhy, so that organization-wide scores are also shared with everyone
• Open text/comment responses are attributed to the person who submitted them and are visible at the team or everyone level, depending on the account visibility settings

These features ensure that while personal data remains secure, collective insights are shared transparently to benefit the team and the entire organization.

Why we don't support anonymous comments

You might wonder why Friday Pulse doesn’t allow anonymous comments. Here’s why:

1. Friday Pulse is intended to spark meaningful conversations. In everyday life, we rarely interact anonymously; our identities are known, and we are accountable for our words. This accountability encourages more thoughtful and constructive dialogue, which is essential for fostering wellbeing in the workplace.

2. Anonymous comments, while initially appealing, can undermine psychological safety. When people are not accountable for their words, they may express themselves less carefully, leading to misunderstandings, conflicts, and a breakdown of trust. As John Suler, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Rider University puts it: “It’s very easy to take this shadowy image of this other person online and start using that to create this internal dialogue where you unleash all your stuff on this other person”.

The role of technology in cultural change

It’s important to recognize the limitations of technology in transforming workplace culture. Friday Pulse is not a quick fix for deep-seated cultural issues like a lack of empathy or low psychological safety. However, it can create a safe space for employees to develop the skills and confidence needed for open conversations with colleagues.

While studies suggest that anonymity can help people share sensitive information, it doesn’t foster a sense of togetherness or shared responsibility for the workplace culture. For organizations committed to diversity and inclusivity, Friday Pulse can be complemented by offline initiatives like employee forums or resource groups. These provide safe spaces for discussions on marginal or counter-cultural issues, much like how Friday Pulse anonymizes team scores to protect individual feelings.