Office Hours Podcast: All Voices Allows Employees To Share Feedback Anonymously
office hours

Office Hours Podcast: All Voices Allows Employees To Share Feedback Anonymously

Spencer Rascoff

Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 75 companies and is incubating several more.

Sep 03 2020

It can be plain scary to speak up about work issues while on the job.

That's why All Voices came to be. It's a platform that allows employees to anonymously share negative feedback and concerns with company administration. Inspired in the midst of the MeToo awakening, founder and CEO Claire Schmidt says the goal is to give voice to all potential work conflicts, "whether it's a culture issue or something more serious, like harassment or bias or mistreatment. And it's a way to give everyone basically an equal voice in their company."

I love what All Voices is doing. In fact, I'm a seed investor. On this episode of Office Hours, hear Claire share the problems All Voices is trying to solve, how the communication process works — and an early lesson learned that forced All Voices to quickly make a radical pivot.

All Voices founder and CEO Claire Schmidt

Photo by Liam Satre Meloy

Founded in 2017, the Santa Monica-based company has seen usage of its tool double since COVID-19 struck in March, Schmidt says. From June-August, 17 new companies have signed up for the service.

The striking uptick has to do with the strain of working during a pandemic, Schmidt says. It's not easy to have direct conversations. Gone are the "spontaneous chats with people in the kitchen or walking through the office" says Schmidt. In their place, All Voices offers surveys and real-time reporting of employees' sensitive issues.

These days, the issues Schmidt is hearing about similar themes across various companies: challenges that come with working from home, concerns about mask compliance and physical distancing for those at the workplace, worries about job security and ideas for how companies can do more to make their workforces more inclusive.


When it comes to Los Angeles as the company's headquarters, Schmidt says she loves the lower-key vibe than what exists in the Bay Area, access to top-notch talent and a diverse economy.

Want more? Subscribe to Office Hours on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify iHeart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.

From Your Site Articles
Related Articles Around the Web
all voices women in tech office hours

Subscribe to our newsletter to catch every headline.

entertainment

Could Hollywood Be on the Verge of a Comeback? Only 'Godzilla' Knows for Sure

The Santa Monica-based movie-ticketing service Atom Tickets has pre-sold more tickets for "Godzilla vs. Kong" than any film since the start of lockdown.

Following a disastrous year for the box office, its performance could be a litmus test for Hollywood and the many theaters that teetered on the brink during the pandemic.

Read more Show less
atom tickets warner bros hbo max entertainment
Sam Blake

Sam primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Previously he was Marjorie Deane Fellow at The Economist, where he wrote for the business and finance sections of the print edition. He has also worked at the XPRIZE Foundation, U.S. Government Accountability Office, KCRW, and MLB Advanced Media (now Disney Streaming Services). He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, an MPP from UCLA Luskin and a BA in History from University of Michigan. Email him at samblake@dot.LA and find him on Twitter @hisamblake

https://twitter.com/hisamblake
samblake@dot.la
los angeles startups

What are LA’s Hottest Startups? We Asked Top VCs to Rank Them

Despite — or in many cases because of — the raging pandemic, 2020 was a great year for many tech startups. It turned out to be an ideal time to be in the video game business, developing a streaming ecommerce platform for Gen Z, or helping restaurants with their online ordering.

But which companies in Southern California had the best year? That is highly subjective of course. But in an attempt to highlight who's hot, we asked dozens of the region's top VCs to weigh in.

We wanted to know what companies they wish they would have invested in if they could go back and do it all over again.

Read more Show less
popshop live scopely ordermark cameo boulevard cloudkitchens goat fabfitfun dave sure savage x fenty playvs zest ai tapcart papaya floqast brainbase openpath fightcamp numerade our place tala servicetitan 100 thieves emotive everytable los angeles startups vc sentiment survey
Ben Bergman

Ben Bergman is the newsroom's senior finance reporter. Previously he was a senior business reporter and host at KPCC, a senior producer at Gimlet Media, a producer at NPR's Morning Edition, and produced two investigative documentaries for KCET. He has been a frequent on-air contributor to business coverage on NPR and Marketplace and has written for The New York Times and Columbia Journalism Review. Ben was a 2017-2018 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economic and Business Journalism at Columbia Business School. In his free time, he enjoys skiing, playing poker, and cheering on The Seattle Seahawks.

https://twitter.com/thebenbergman
ben@dot.la
RELATEDTRENDING

© dot.LA All rights reserved

TermsPrivacyCopyrightCookies

Follow Us: