Tomio Geron/Forbes 8.24.11: Start-up Rypple brings social networking tools to human resources departments, upending practices like the often-dreaded annual performance reviews.
Instead of traditional performance review tools, Rypple is a social website where people can go to quickly give feedback to anyone in their company. People can also go to the website to see what people are doing in the company and comment on other people’s actions. Co-workers or managers can also give other employees badges for doing a good job on a certain project.
Now Rypple is launching a new feature for companies called Rypple Flow, which is basically a constant real-time stream of activity in a company that is piped in over an HD television. At a number of technology companies such as Facebook and LinkedIn, companies show a world map on a television in the company’s lobby with dots popping up to show new members or new social connections. Rypple Flow is a similar idea, except it is designed to show activity inside a company. The idea is that employees can walk by the screen and keep in touch with what’s happening all over the company. The service is free for paid users of Rypple.
Toronto-based Kobo, the e-reader and digital book company, is one of the first users of Rypple Flow. The company was looking a way for employees to recognize each other and build the company culture around shared goals, says Jennifer Ricci, vice president of employee experience at Kobo. Another benefit of Rypple is reduction of mass emails with many “reply-all” messages, Ricci says. Instead, those messages typically end up on Rypple.
“Instead of waiting for a company town hall meeting or monthly newsletter, with Rypple people can immediately recognize people in other departments and recognize collaboration on goals,” Ricci says. “Everyone can rally around goals with real-time recognition.”
Rypple, which is backed by investors including Bridgescale Partners, Edgestone Capital Ventures, Extreme Venture Partners and PayPal founder Peter Thiel, is used by companies including Facebook (recently in Wired), Gilt Groupe, Rackspace, and Accenture.
The service is designed for people to give coaching from managers, progress reports towards goals, recognition of jobs well done or other real-time feedback says Daniel Debow, co-CEO of Rypple. In software development, companies have moved to “agile development,” or constant small software updates instead of infrequent major updates. The same applies for Rypple, where people can get immediate feedback and adjust their work accordingly, Debow says.
Rypple is a bit of a cross between the social interaction of Facebook and the badges and achievements of Foursquare. It’s in the realm of other companies such as Jive Software and Yammer that are bringing social networking into enterprises. Most employees and managers hate traditional performance management software, says Debow, but Rypple is designed to be lightweight and simple to use, in the way that consumer services such as Facebook are. If end of year evaluations are used, managers can look back at the record of employees on Rypple for a quick review.
The feedback and evaluation of employees can be made public in the whole company or just sent as private messages. Most people make them public if they are positive messages, says Debow. Rypple is not designed to change people’s existing behaviors, Debow says. “It’s about taking that latent behavior and amplifying it,” Debow says. Instead of sending a “thank you” email to a colleague, people can send that on Rypple. That recognition can then be surfaced instead of hidden, Debow says. Now on the TV screens, it can be surfaced even more.
