From feedback to action: closing the loop with your team
Collecting feedback is the easy part. How to sort what you hear, decide what to do, and tell your team what changed, with a weekly loop and example notes.
- Feedback only builds trust if people can see what happened next. Most don’t expect anything to: in a 2023 Gartner survey, only a third of employees believed their organisation would act on their feedback.
- You don’t have to fix everything. Pick one thing, give it an owner and a date, and tell the team.
- Say what you’re not doing too, and why. “No, because” is better than silence.
Why feedback goes nowhere
Gartner surveyed nearly 3,500 employees in June 2023. Only one-third believed their organisation would act on their feedback, and 46% wished it did more to address it. When people don’t think anything will happen, they stop answering, or they tick “Okay” and move on.
In small teams, the reasons feedback stalls are usually ordinary:
- Too much at once. Twenty comments feel like twenty jobs, so none of them get done.
- No owner. Everyone agrees the rota is a problem, and nobody is asked to fix it.
- No time set aside. Reading the feedback gets done. Deciding what to do about it gets put off.
- Nobody is told. You did change something, but the team doesn’t connect it with what they said.
The last one is the most common, and the easiest to fix.
A simple weekly loop
You don’t need a working group or a project plan. If you ask your team something every week, this is enough:
- Read everything soon after the round closes. The same day if you can. Read every comment, not just the overall split.
- Group the comments. A few rough piles: workload, equipment, communication, a particular process. Notice which piles are bigger than last week.
- Pick one thing. The issue that came up most, or the one that’s cheapest to fix. One thing done is worth more than five promised.
- Give it an owner and a date. Even if the owner is you. “Fix the rota clash by Friday” is a plan. “Look into the rota” isn’t.
- Write a short note to the team. What you heard, what you’re doing, and what you’re not doing.
- Check next week. Did the comments on that issue go down? If not, it isn’t fixed yet.
Sorting what you hear
Not every comment needs the same response. A rough sort helps you decide what to do with each one.
| Type | Example | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Quick fix | “The dishwasher’s been broken for a week.” | Fix it, and say so in your next note. |
| Needs time | “Handovers between shifts keep missing things.” | Say you’ve heard it, who is looking at it, and when you’ll report back. |
| Can’t change | “Can we close on Mondays?” | Say no, and explain why. People can accept a reason. They don’t accept silence. |
| One-off | “Awful week, everything went wrong.” | Note it. If it comes up again, it’s a pattern. |
| Serious concern | A comment describing bullying or harassment. | Treat it as a report of the issue. You can’t speak to the person, so act on what’s described. |
For serious concerns, act on the issue even though you can’t talk to the person who raised it: remind everyone how to report problems in confidence, check your policy works in practice, and look at the area the comment describes. Our guide to the duty to prevent sexual harassment covers what employers are expected to do.
Whatever the comment, don’t try to work out who wrote it. Even if you think you know, acting on a guess breaks the trust that makes people write honestly in the first place.
Writing a “You said, we did” note
A “You said, we did” note is a few lines to the whole team that connect what they said to what you did. It’s the most direct way to show that feedback goes somewhere. Three examples:
A café: “Several of you said the new till is slowing service at lunch. The supplier is coming in on Tuesday to set up quick keys for our 20 most popular items. Weekend hours are staying the same for now: our lease doesn’t allow later closing.”
A 12-person agency: “Late client changes came up again. From next week, any change requested after Wednesday midday goes through Priya and moves to the following week unless it’s urgent. We’ll try it for a month and see.”
A care home team: “Thank you for the comments about night handovers. We’re trying a written handover sheet from Monday. A few of you asked for an extra person on nights. We can’t do that this quarter, but we’ve asked the agency to send the same two bank staff where they can.”
What these have in common:
- They describe the issue in the team’s terms, without quoting anyone.
- They say what will change, and when.
- They say no where the answer is no, and give the reason.
- They don’t argue with the comments or explain why people are wrong.
In Pera, you write this note on the results of a round, and it appears in the next check-in email under “From last time”, so people read it just before they answer again.
When you can’t act
Sometimes the honest answer is that nothing will change soon. The budget is fixed, the client is the client, the regulation is the regulation. Say that. Explaining a constraint still closes the loop. What wears trust down is the same issue coming up week after week with no reply at all.
If something has come up three weeks running and you still can’t act on it, say when you’ll look at it again, and then do.
What to do this week
- Block 30 minutes in your diary for the day your next round of feedback comes in.
- Read every comment and sort it into one of the five types above.
- Pick one thing, and give it an owner and a date.
- Write a three-line note: what you heard, what you’re doing, and what you’re not doing and why.
- Next week, check whether the comments on that issue have changed.
If the comments are too vague to act on, the problem may be the question. See asking better questions.
Questions
How quickly should I respond to feedback?
Before the next round, if you can. A short note that says “we’ve heard this, and here’s what happens next” is worth more than a full answer three weeks later.
What if the comments contradict each other?
That’s normal. Say so in your note, for example “some of you want more meetings, some fewer”, then say what you’re going to try, and check the next round to see how it landed.
Should I reply to individual comments?
Reply to the theme, not the person. With anonymous feedback you don’t know who wrote a comment, and quoting it back word for word can make the person who wrote it feel exposed.