A manager's guide to acting on your CultureMonkey survey results

Acting on your team's CultureMonkey survey results comes down to five moves: read your results, share them with your team, choose one focus area together, commit to an owned action, and follow through where your team can see it. The fifth is the one that decides whether people answer honestly next time.

This guide is for people managers. It walks through each move, what CultureMonkey shows you at each point, and the mistakes that most often stall a team's action plan. For the organization-wide process, see How action planning works in CultureMonkey.

Before you start: when your results appear

Your dashboard only shows results once enough of your team has responded to clear the anonymity threshold. Until then you will see Insufficient data yet. That is not a bad result; it is CultureMonkey protecting the people on a small team. See Is my feedback anonymous in CultureMonkey? for what your team is told about this.

In an anonymous survey you see your team's pooled results and comments, never who gave which answer. Plan your conversation on that basis.

Step 1: Read your results

Your CultureMonkey manager dashboard turns your team's answers into a few panels worth reading in this order:

• Headline metrics give you the overall picture. See Read your team's headline metrics.
• My strengths and Focus areas rank your highest and lowest drivers, up to five each. On the default 0 to 10 scale a strength scores 8.0 or above and a focus area 7.0 or below. See View your team's strengths and focus areas.
• Driver trends show whether a low driver is new or has been sliding for several cycles. See Track your team's drivers over time.
• Feedback sentiment and the comments show you why. See Review your team's feedback sentiment.
• Benchmarks tell you whether a score is low for your organization or low for everyone. See Compare your team to benchmarks in CultureMonkey.

Step 2: Share the results with your team

People who took the survey want to know it was read. Sharing the results is the first visible sign of that, and it turns a score into a conversation. It does not need a separate meeting: a slot in your regular team meeting is enough.

• Say what you heard. Share your strengths and your lowest one or two drivers, in plain words.
• Thank people for being honest, especially about the low scores. That is what makes the next survey worth running.
• Ask, do not defend. "What would make the biggest difference here?" gets you further than explaining why a score is unfair.
• Never try to work out who said what. The survey was anonymous for a reason. Asking who gave a low score undoes the trust you are trying to build.

Step 3: Choose one focus area together

Five focus areas is a menu, not a to-do list. Pick one: usually your lowest driver, unless another is both low and something your team can actually change. If your team helped choose it, they are far more likely to help with it.

Some low drivers sit outside your control, such as pay or senior leadership. Say so openly, pass the feedback to HR, and pick something your team can move for this cycle.

Step 4: Turn it into an action

Click New action in the Action summary panel on your dashboard. Give the action a name written as an outcome, set the driver to the focus area you chose, and add an owner and a deadline. If you are not sure what to try, open the Action Plan Repository from the form, filter to that driver and take a ready-made plan, then rewrite it for your team.

An action's owner must be an admin-level user, which is often you. Team members join as collaborators, and those without a CultureMonkey login take part through a private link. See Create action plans for your team for the manager's path through the form.

Step 5: Follow through where the team can see it

Move the action across your board as the work happens: To do, In progress, Completed. Your dashboard keeps a running count, including how many of your team's feedback items became actions.

If the action was created from a comment, CultureMonkey emails the employee who wrote it as the action moves, without revealing who they are to anyone. Either way, tell the team yourself when something changes. "You told us X, so we did Y" is the sentence that lifts the next survey.

Step 6: Check it at the next survey

When the next survey or pulse closes, go back to the driver you worked on. If it has climbed above the focus-area threshold it drops off the list, which is the outcome you want. If it has not moved, ask the team why before you try the next thing.

Common mistakes

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to act on every low score?

No. People understand that time is limited. What they need to see is that you heard them, that they had a say in what gets worked on, and that something moved. One focus area per cycle does that.

Should the team conversation be a separate meeting?

It does not need to be. A slot in a regular team meeting works, and keeping it inside normal work makes it easier to come back to as the action progresses.

Can I find out who gave a low score?

Not in an anonymous CultureMonkey survey. You see pooled results and comments without names, and results for groups below the anonymity threshold are hidden. Do not ask the team either: discuss the theme, not the person.

What if our lowest driver is outside my control?

Pass it on to HR or the relevant leader with the comments behind it, tell your team you have done so, and pick a driver your team can change for this cycle.

Where do I create the action?

From the New action button in the Action summary panel on your CultureMonkey manager dashboard, or from the Act area. Both open the same form.

How will I know it worked?

Watch the driver at your next survey. If a focus area climbs above the threshold, it drops off your list. Your dashboard also shows how many of your actions reached Completed.

Where to go next

• The whole process: How action planning works in CultureMonkey
• Find your focus area: View your team's strengths and focus areas
• Create the action: Create action plans for your team
• Tour your dashboard: A tour of the CultureMonkey manager dashboard