Think back to the last time you had to write a self-assessment as part of your yearly performance review. Odds are it was littered with outmoded, stilted questions that don’t really grant much room for insightful feedback.
At least, that’s been the experience for Jennifer and Landon Shoop, a wife and husband duo who’ve grown increasingly frustrated by the way performance appraisals are administered. From their vantage point, once a year performance reviews are inefficient, uninsightful, and ultimately fruitless. It’s hard, they said, to accurately capture a year’s worth of contributions and improvements and challenges using this system.
In an effort to effect a change, Jennifer and Landon put their heads down and got to work on , a new Chicago-based tech startup that wants to give managers an alternative way to conduct assessments.
“We’ve totally reimagined writing a performance review,” Jennifer said. “We believe feedback should be given in an ongoing, on-demand fashion.”
It works like this: managers can invite their employees to Fizz’s platform, charting whatever goals and organizational values need a little loving. Those goals can be customized, since they’re bound to differ remarkably by role, industry, and individual expectations. For every goal that’s met, employees enter tweet-length reports that catalog what they’ve done and how it reflects on overall goals and values. In return, it gives managers the opportunity to give real-time feedback.
The idea is to tell an employee how they’re doing while they’re doing it, which helps continued growth and learning, they said.
That opportunity to provide instant feedback to a workplace flooding fast with approval-craving Millennials solves a pain point many companies are just beginning to recognize.
And for employees, Jennifer said Fizz offers the opportunity to level the playing field.
“Traditional performance reviews are often biased against women and minorities in the workplace,” she said. “There’s been a whole round of terrifying research that shows that … It’s a way to bring more transparency and fairness to a process that’s traditionally not favorable to some folks in the workplace.
Fizz is available at $7 a head per month, with a discount if you sign up for an annual contract. Jennifer said about 40 managers from local companies have already been testing the waters.
“It’s been awesome growing this business in Chicago because a lot of our early adopters have been fellow Chicago startups and growth-stage companies that are looking to do something in a more efficient way,” she said.
Fizz launched in 2015, with Jennifer starting full-time work in September and Landon following suit by October.
Until now, they’ve only raised money from friends and family, but Landon said they’re currently exploring the VC landscape in search of investors for a seed round of funding.
Images via Shutterstock/Fizz.
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