🔐 Who can use this feature?
Roles: Report Owner, Report Viewer, Account Administrator (on reports with Take action turned on)
Survey types: Attributed (Snapshot), Unattributed
Subscriptions: Any package with Engagement
Before you create an action plan, it helps to know what your results say and what your team wants to change. This guide takes you through reviewing your survey report, discussing the results with your team, and deciding on a focus and an action.
We recommend the Understand, Act, Repeat approach to address feedback and check its impact over time.
For a guided course, take Understanding and Leveraging Engagement Survey Results. When you are ready to record your plan, see Getting started with action plans on survey results
Approach your results with the right mindset
Expect a range: Results include positive and constructive insights, some of them surprising. Treat surprises as blind spots you can now address.
Model how feedback is received: Accept your team's experience as their reality, even when it differs from yours. This builds the psychological safety that future honesty needs.
Learn more: See how to approach receiving feedback from a leadership perspective.
Review your results in the report
A simple review leaves more time for discussion and ideas for action than weeks of analysis. Work through the report in this order.
Step 1: Check participation
Check whether the results represent most people on your team. Near the top of your report, beneath Select report, you can see participation information.
Response rate: In this example, this report owner leads 26 employees and has a 77% response rate. You can relax once you reach around 75%. Read what makes a good response rate.
Stay balanced: Do not fixate on the rate. You have the views of everyone who responded, so consider, discuss, and act on their feedback. Response rates often rise when people see action.
Demographics: Select the Participation tab to see participation by demographic. What you see depends on how your report was configured. Use it to check whether most responses come from one demographic, for example one location in a team split across two or more locations.
Step 2: Check your engagement score
Check the outcome you are driving towards and how you are doing at the top of your report. We often combine the average score from a few key questions into an outcome factor such as Engagement, the key factor.
Percent favorable: Scores show the percentage of people who chose either of the top two options, typically Agree and Strongly Agree.
Learn more: See Likert question response formats and the agree format for how favorability is calculated.
Step 3: Compare your results
Check how you are tracking compared to others. Under key factors, the arrow under your index factor shows the difference from your comparison.
In this example, the 68% Engagement score is 1 percentage point lower than the company overall result. To check what your results are compared to, look at Compared to in the top right.
Comparison options: You may also compare to historical surveys or a Culture Amp benchmark. You can load in external benchmarks and internal demographic comparisons.
Previous surveys: If you have been through the survey process before, comparing to previous results shows whether past actions made an impact on earlier focus areas.
First survey: Compare to the company overall to see where your team's experience differs from others in the organization, positively or negatively.
Step 4: Review other factors
Look for the key themes in the results. Other factors are combinations of questions that represent parts of the workplace that may influence your key factor, such as Leadership and Management affecting Engagement.
Favorability: Hover over a factor to see how favorable (green), neutral (light grey), or unfavorable (red) your team feels.
Comparison column: Shows how each factor compares as a number.
Sorting: Select any column heading to sort by it.
Question detail: Select a factor to open the Insights Explorer panel beside your report. It shows the questions that contribute to that factor without leaving the page.
Step 5: Review question results
Use the Questions page to look at each item rather than broad factors. Select any column heading to sort.
What are we doing well? Select Favorable Score to see the highest scoring items, which are strengths. Some items naturally score higher or lower than others, so add the comparison for context.
What are our high scores compared to others? Select Comparison to see items that scored above your comparison, such as the company overall, a historical survey, or an industry benchmark. These show your team's unique strengths, so celebrate them.
What are our low scores compared to others? Select Comparison again to see items that scored below your comparison. These show your team's unique opportunities. Note which results matched your expectations and which surprised you.
Are any questions polarizing? Look for questions with a large favorable and a large unfavorable group. They are strong topics for discussion.
Step 6: Find where the biggest impact is
Check what matters most to your people for your key factor. Key factors such as Engagement measure outcomes that are hard to affect directly, for example it is difficult to make people want to stay at a company.
Impact: Impact shows which other questions had the biggest effect on the key factor across everyone in your organization.
How it works: The report uses impact and driver analysis to identify the items with the largest impact.
Why it matters: An item can score very low and still not be a high driver of Engagement at your organization.
Step 7: Choose where to focus
Look for a focus with room to improve (low favorability or below your comparison) and a high or medium impact on the key factor. The Focus agent analyzes all of the data above in your report and highlights the areas we recommend you focus on first.
Step 8: Read the comments (if available)
You may or may not have access to comments. They can be identifiable, so check with your HR administrator what you have been given access to.
Treat comments as secondary to the quantitative results for these reasons:
Comments often come from a small number of respondents, so they may not represent everyone. A survey gives each employee an equal say, and focusing on a few individuals can defeat that purpose.
Some people write most of the comments across multiple questions, so the noisiest voices get the most attention.
People are sensitive to negative feedback, so it is tempting to focus on negative comments and ignore larger results and positive comments.
Use comments for context: After you absorb the results, check the comments on low scores for detail that helps explain them. Do the same for high scores.
In your discussion: Paraphrase a few comments that are constructive and in line with the overall results. This reinforces that the overall results shape the conversation and action.
Step 9: Discuss the results with your team
A survey is a tool to guide your focus, your discussions with employees, and your tracking of progress. Once you have absorbed the results, start the conversation.
Prepare to share the results
Set a time: Where possible, meet in person in a room where people feel comfortable being candid.
Share in the platform: In most cases, review the results as a group in Culture Amp. PDF or other exports are also an option.
Set ground rules: The lists below help set the stage.
Do:
Thank your team for providing valuable feedback on how the organization can improve.
Remind everyone that you are discussing perceptions. Perceptions may differ from your own, but everyone's perceptions are valid.
Allow time for each person to comment as you work through the feedback, and explore the results as a group. Assure the team this is a safe and confidential forum.
Call out that it is tempting to find out who said what, and ask everyone to set that aside and focus on high-level themes, action, and next steps.
Encourage people to speak for themselves by using "I" statements instead of "you" and "we" statements.
Don't:
Dismiss feedback or comments as wrong or misguided. Pay attention to any negative judgment that comes up, then focus on what could be improved or what an alternative approach might look like.
Lead the discussion
Discussing results takes courage to be vulnerable. Walk through the results in the same flow as above: participation, key factor, other factors, questions.
Open up: Share where results matched your expectations and where they surprised you, so others feel open to share.
Ask about strengths and opportunities: Are the results aligned with what you expected, and are there any surprises? What do you see as team strengths, and what stands out as opportunities?
Connect to everyday work: For the highest scoring items, ask what your team does differently that led to a positive result. For the lowest scoring items, ask which behaviors and processes can be developed.
Step 10: Select a focus with your team
Pick one or two focus areas to start on straight away. Sticking to a small number makes meaningful change more likely.
Consider the recommended focus areas highlighted by the Focus agent indicated by the green bar on the far right. When selecting a focus, think about:
Lowest favorability: Which questions have the lowest favorability, and where does your score differ from internal and external comparisons?
Recurring topics: Is there an item or behavior that keeps coming up in team meetings or discussions, or that aligns with current organizational strategy?
Team preferences: Ask each team member which items they would like the team to focus on.
Largest impact: Decide which items would have the largest impact on your team's experience. You do not need to overthink it, and a simple vote works.
Step 11: Brainstorm ideas for action
Once you have a focus area, use these sources to find specific actions.
Your team: They understand your context and what will work. Try an ideation process, because members may have seen innovative solutions at past companies.
Your peers: A strength in your team might be the opportunity in another. Ask your peers what they do differently for the same focus area.
Your HR team: Ask for guidance, or to be matched with a team lead in the organization that excels in this area.
Your own research: Look at online resources, books, and industry events.
Suggested plans: When you create the plan, select Start from a suggested action plan to see approaches that have worked for others. This replaces the separate Inspirations step in the Action Framework.
Always consider your context, because what works at one organization may not fit the values of yours. Check with your team that the action makes sense, and edit it so it fits your team's structure, context, and culture.
Step 12: Create your action plan
Start an action plan from your survey report
Remember to ensure you set next steps and clear ownership in your plan. In the action plan
✨ Use AI Coach in Surveys for help along the way
If you see the Coach button in the top right corner of your Engagement report, you have access to AI Coach in Surveys. Select Coach to chat with it about your results in a side panel.
Explore themes: Ask for the key themes in your results, for example "Explore key survey themes". Coach uses the same data you see in the report, including scores, favorable and unfavorable percentages, impact ratings, and any questions you flagged for focus.
Find your focus: Try "What are the most important themes from our survey I should pay attention to?", "Where are we performing well and where can we improve?", or "Can you highlight patterns in feedback about recognition and reward?"
Share results: Try "Can you draft a message to share our results and action plan with the team?", "Can you draft a Teams message summarizing key changes based on focus areas?", or "Help me create a one-page summary celebrating our strengths and outlining next steps." Adjust the drafts to your team's norms and your organization's policies.
Brainstorm actions: Try "Help me identify actions and next steps for my team.", "Let's brainstorm actions to improve collaboration among remote teams.", or "What actions could I take to increase confidence in leadership within my team?" Review and adapt the suggestions with your team.
Create the plan yourself: Coach does not create action plans in Culture Amp.
Privacy: Your interactions with AI Coach in Surveys are private. No one else in your organization, including your manager or administrators, can see what you share.
💡 Tip: Your team's results are not obsolete when the survey closes. Use them in weekly one-on-ones, to prioritize discussions at a team offsite or retrospective, or to give new hires a realistic picture of your team's culture.
💬 Need help? Open a Support Conversation to speak with our Product Support team.