As the Scottish poet Robert Burns once wrote: “Oh would some power the giftie gie us, To see ourselves as others see us.” More than 200 years after Burns penned that example of broad Scottish vernacular in To A Louse, there’s now a range of smartphone apps that promise to do just that, albeit in somewhat more comprehensible English.
As The National reported yesterday, several free apps will allow co-workers to give feedback on their colleagues anonymously. As with anything else in the virtual world involving the cloak of anonymity, this is guaranteed to result in responses of a kind that might be described, to use the most diplomatic language, as robustly honest.
Knozen, a free iPhone app, becomes active once seven people from the same company make contact. Good.Co gathers feedback from one’s contacts on social media. Photofeeler allows users to have their profile photos assessed for qualities such as competence, likeability and influence.
These apps promote truth, but a little too much truth may be a dangerous thing and embolden another type of creature altogether. We’ve all heard of horrible bosses, we might soon also be recording the rise of “trigger-appy” employees firing off multiple acerbic put-downs about their co-workers.