How action planning works in CultureMonkey
The whole CultureMonkey action-planning process in one page: the Listen, Analyse, Act framework, the six steps from a survey result to a completed action, who does what, and how to tell whether your actions are working.
On this page
Action planning in CultureMonkey is the Act stage of a three-part loop: Listen, Analyse, Act. Your survey results show which engagement drivers need attention, each problem you choose to work on becomes an action with one owner, one driver and a deadline, and that action is tracked on a board until it is completed and the employees who raised it hear back.
This page is the whole process in one place: the framework, the six steps from a survey result to a finished action, who does what, and how to tell whether your actions are working. Each step links to the detailed CultureMonkey guide for it.
Find the drivers where your scores are lowest, pick one or two, and turn each into an action with a named owner, the driver it serves and a real deadline. Start from a suggested action, an action template, a piece of employee feedback or a blank form. Move each action across the board from To do to Completed, and when an action came from feedback, CultureMonkey tells the employee at each stage without revealing who they are. After the next survey, check whether the driver moved.
The framework: Listen, Analyse, Act
CultureMonkey is organised around one loop, and action planning only makes sense as its last stage:
- Listen. Run engagement surveys, pulses and lifecycle surveys, and collect open feedback, to hear from your people.
- Analyse. Read the reports: driver scores, benchmarks, heatmaps, strengths and focus areas, and the comments behind the numbers. This tells you where to act.
- Act. Commit to specific changes, give each one an owner and a deadline, track them to completion, and tell people what changed. This is what the Actions area in CultureMonkey is for.
The thread that ties the three together is the driver. Every survey question rolls up into a driver such as Recognition, Growth or Manager relationship, every driver gets a score, and every action in CultureMonkey is tagged with the driver it is meant to improve. That tag is what lets you connect a low score to the work done about it, and then to the score that follows.
Step 1: Find where to act
Start from the drivers that are furthest behind, not the ones that feel most urgent. CultureMonkey gives you three views of that:
- The survey report and heatmap show every driver's score, compared against benchmarks and sliced by team, location and other groups. See Read the dashboard.
- Focus areas on the manager dashboard list a team's lowest-scoring drivers, up to five. On the default 0 to 10 scale a driver counts as a focus area at 7.0 or below. See View your team's strengths and focus areas.
- The comments behind a driver tell you why it is low. A score tells you the temperature; the open-text feedback tells you the story.
Then pick one or two drivers, not five. Concentrated effort on the weakest driver beats token effort spread across every low score, and the next survey will surface what still needs work.
Step 2: Choose what to do
Knowing a driver is low does not tell you what to try. CultureMonkey offers four starting points, and all four produce the same kind of action:
| Starting point | What it gives you | Best when |
|---|---|---|
| Suggested actions | One ready-made recommendation for each of your three weakest drivers against benchmark, drawn from CultureMonkey's action library | You have just opened a survey report and want a shortlist |
| Action templates | The full library of pre-written action plans, filtered by driver, plus a Custom library your own admins write | You want to browse ideas for one driver |
| A feedback item | An action with the employee's comment already attached, so the loop can be closed with them later | A specific comment prompted the work |
| A blank form | An empty action you write yourself | You already know the initiative you want to run |
See View AI-suggested actions, Browse and use action templates and Create an action from a feedback item. Whichever you start from, rewrite the wording for your own team before you save. A template gives you a plausible what; only your people's comments tell you the why.
Step 3: Commit to it
An action in CultureMonkey has four required fields, and each one does a job:
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Action name | Written as an outcome ("Start weekly peer shout-outs in the Monday stand-up"), because it is what everyone scans on the board |
| Owner | Exactly one accountable person, always an admin-level user. The owner is emailed when the action is assigned to them |
| Driver | Connects the action back to the score that prompted it, and is how actions roll up in reporting |
| Deadline | Mandatory, because an action with no date tends to become an action no one does |
A description and collaborators are optional. Collaborators are how you bring in the rest of the team: any employee can be one, and those without a CultureMonkey login take part through a private link. See Create a new action and Assign owners and collaborators to an action.
Step 4: Track it to done
Every action lives on the Actions board, a Kanban with five fixed statuses: To do, On hold, In progress, Cancelled and Completed. New actions start in To do, and you move one by dragging its card to another column. The move saves immediately. See View the action Kanban board in CultureMonkey and Update an action's status.
To see whether the programme as a whole is moving, use the reporting views:
- The action summary (Act > Summary) shows total actions, the To do / In progress / Completed split, where actions came from, and the feedback-to-action ratio. Your completion rate is Completed divided by total actions. See View the action summary report.
- Driver-wise action stats rank drivers by how many actions they carry. Read them next to your driver scores: a low-scoring driver with few actions is a blind spot. See See driver-wise action stats.
- Exports give you every action in a spreadsheet, and the owner status report puts each driver's score next to its action counts. See Download an actions report.
Step 5: Close the loop with employees
This is the step most programmes skip, and it is the one employees notice. When an action is linked to employee feedback, CultureMonkey emails the employee as the action moves:
| Action moves to | The employee is told |
|---|---|
| To do | Their feedback was taken up |
| In progress | Their feedback is being worked on |
| Completed | Their feedback has been resolved, with your private reply if you write one |
Moves to On hold or Cancelled send nothing, and the notification never reveals who is behind an anonymous comment. For actions not tied to a comment, closing the loop is up to you: tell the team what you heard and what you changed. Employees who see their feedback lead to something are far more likely to answer honestly next time.
Step 6: Check whether it worked
After your next survey or pulse, go back to the driver you acted on. If a focus area has climbed above the threshold it drops off the list, and your suggested actions are recalculated from the new gaps. If the driver has not moved, the action may have been the wrong one, or it may still be in To do. Driver trends over time show the direction; see Track your team's drivers over time.
Who does what
| Account admins | Managers | |
|---|---|---|
| What they see | Every action in the account | Actions they own, created or collaborate on, plus those of the people who report to them |
| Where they start | The survey report, heatmap and Act area | Strengths and focus areas, and the New action button on the manager dashboard |
| Can own an action | Yes | Yes, where they hold an admin-level login |
| Reporting | Full action summary, with a date range, and the owner status report | A team-scoped action summary on their dashboard |
Engagement improves team by team, so the managers closest to a team should raise and run most of its actions. Organization-wide drivers such as leadership or pay usually need an owner in HR or the leadership team. For the manager's side of this in full, see A manager's guide to acting on your CultureMonkey survey results.
Frequently asked questions
What is an action in CultureMonkey?
A single named piece of work with an owner who is accountable, a driver it is meant to improve and a deadline. It moves across a board of five statuses until it is completed or deliberately cancelled. The definition is the same whether an admin or a manager creates it.
How many actions should we take after a survey?
Fewer than you think. One or two well-owned actions on your weakest drivers usually do more than a long list that stalls in To do. CultureMonkey's suggested actions cover your three weakest drivers for exactly this reason, and many teams pick up just one of them per cycle.
Does CultureMonkey notify employees when we act on their feedback?
Yes, when the action is linked to their feedback. The employee is emailed when the action moves to To do, In progress and Completed, and your private reply is included with the resolution. The email never reveals who wrote an anonymous comment. Actions created from scratch notify no one when they move.
Are suggested actions written by AI?
The selection is automated from your data: CultureMonkey ranks your drivers by their gap to the industry benchmark for your size band and picks your three weakest. The recommendations themselves come from CultureMonkey's curated action library, and you edit them before they become actions.
Can managers create their own actions?
Yes. Managers create actions from the New action button on their dashboard or from the Act area, using the same form as admins. Their board is scoped to their own team, and an action's owner must be an admin-level user, so non-admin team members join as collaborators.
How do we know if our actions are working?
Watch two things together. Completion: are actions reaching Completed rather than piling up in To do? And the driver: did it move at the next survey? The owner status report puts both in one sheet, with each driver's score beside its action counts.
Where to go next
- Decide where to act: View your team's strengths and focus areas
- Let CultureMonkey shortlist ideas: View AI-suggested actions
- Browse the library: Browse and use action templates
- Act on a comment: Create an action from a feedback item
- Write one from scratch: Create a new action
- Share the work: Assign owners and collaborators to an action
- Set dates and discuss: Add deadlines and comments to actions
- Work the board: View the action Kanban board in CultureMonkey
- Move an action on: Update an action's status
- Report on progress: View the action summary report
- Check effort against scores: See driver-wise action stats
- Get the data out: Download an actions report
- For managers: A manager's guide to acting on your CultureMonkey survey results
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