Creating Feedback Loops In Change Training

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗙𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗶𝗻 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 🗣️ Ever feel like your Learning and Development (L&D) programs are missing the mark? You're not alone. One of the biggest pitfalls in L&D is the lack of mechanisms for collecting and acting on employee feedback. Without this crucial component, your initiatives may fail to address the real needs and preferences of your team, leaving them disengaged and underprepared. 📌 And here's the kicker—if you ignore this, your L&D efforts risk becoming irrelevant, wasting valuable resources, and ultimately failing to develop the skills your workforce truly needs. But don't worry—there’s a straightforward fix: integrate feedback loops into your L&D programs. Here’s a clear plan to get started: 📝 Surveys and Questionnaires: Regularly distribute surveys and questionnaires to gather insights on what’s working and what isn’t. Keep them short and focused to maximize response rates and actionable feedback. 📝 Focus Groups: Organize small focus groups to dive deeper into specific issues. This setting allows for more detailed discussions and nuanced understanding of employee needs and preferences. 📝 Real-Time Polling: Use real-time polling tools during training sessions to gauge immediate reactions and make on-the-fly adjustments. This keeps the learning experience dynamic and responsive. 📝 One-on-One Interviews: Conduct one-on-one interviews with a diverse cross-section of employees to get a more personal and detailed perspective. This can uncover insights that broader surveys might miss. 📝 Anonymous Feedback Channels: Ensure there are anonymous ways for employees to provide feedback. This encourages honesty and helps identify issues that employees might be hesitant to discuss openly. 📝 Feedback Integration: Don’t just collect feedback—act on it. Regularly review the feedback and make necessary adjustments to your L&D programs. Communicate these changes to employees to show that their input is valued and acted upon. 📝 Continuous Monitoring: Use analytics tools to continuously monitor engagement and performance metrics. This provides ongoing data to help refine and improve your L&D initiatives. Integrating these feedback mechanisms will not only enhance the effectiveness of your L&D programs but also boost employee engagement and satisfaction. When employees see that their feedback leads to tangible changes, they are more likely to be invested in the learning process. Have any innovative ways to incorporate feedback into L&D? Drop your tips in the comments! ⬇️ #LearningAndDevelopment #EmployeeEngagement #ContinuousImprovement #FeedbackLoop #ProfessionalDevelopment #TrainingInnovation

💬 When Listening Isn’t Enough: Designing Teams That Act on Employee Feedback We’ve all seen it: ✔️ The survey goes out ✔️ The insights come in ❌ And then… crickets. Listening without action is like watching the director’s cut without ever releasing the film. Great feedback loops don’t just collect opinions, they shape how organizations operate. Companies like Medallia are proving this: Employee Experience (EX) is no longer just about sentiment. It’s about designing teams, workflows, and leadership models that respond in real time. Here's an example: Schneider Electric wanted to boost employee engagement and retention, especially among frontline and distributed workers who often felt disconnected from corporate decision-making. What Medallia Did: Using Medallia’s Employee Experience (EX) platform, Schneider Electric implemented a real-time listening strategy that went beyond annual surveys. They deployed: - Pulse surveys tied to key employee lifecycle moments (e.g., onboarding, team transitions) - Text analytics and sentiment analysis to uncover patterns in open-ended feedback - Customized dashboards for local leaders and HRBPs to take targeted action The Outcome: Managers received tailored insights along with "action nudges"—specific, behavior-based suggestions to improve engagement on their teams. Leadership teams reorganized internal mobility pathways after identifying a common blocker in feedback around career progression. Engagement scores improved, especially among underrepresented groups and early-career employees. 🎯 The real competitive edge? Org design that closes the loop: -Leaders trained to recognize signal from noise -Team structures flexible enough to act on input -Feedback tied directly to decision rights and resourcing Systems in place to show employees: we heard you, and here’s what we did Because trust isn’t built in surveys—it’s built in what happens next. 📊 I’m curious—what’s one way your org has acted on employee feedback in the past year? #EmployeeExperience #OrganizationalDesign #LeadershipDevelopment #Medallia #PeopleStrategy #TrustBuilding #EXtoAction #HRInnovation

Closing the Feedback Loop Isn’t a Checkbox—It’s the Whole Damn Circuit You asked for feedback. You got it. Now what? Too many leaders treat follow-through like a favor—something optional, maybe even inconvenient. But in elite teams, responding to feedback isn’t a nice to have. It’s the whole point. At Greencastle, we treat feedback response like a mission order: - We document what we heard. - We decide what to do. - We tell people what we did. But here’s the catch: not all feedback deserves a green light. Anonymous input is valuable—but not infallible. If you react to every piece without thinking, you trade discipline for drama: - Undermining managers before hearing the full story. - Solving for symptoms, not root causes. - Making noise louder instead of signal clearer. As a leader, I have to weigh if making a change to one piece of feedback might cause 10 others to be upset. So we apply a few filters: Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. Not every harsh comment is sabotage—sometimes it’s just fatigue, a bad process, or a bad day. Hitchens’ Razor: What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Emotion isn’t proof. Data is. Context is. Repetition over time is. Which is why we try not to make snap changes—we look for themes. We cross-check Shadow Board insights with AARs. We match anonymous eNPS feedback with team leads' observations. We ask our team: - Is this a pattern or a one-off? - Are we seeing this from multiple levels, functions, or client types? - Is the signal getting louder over time? Patrick Lencioni calls it out clearly: conflict avoidance kills trust. But knee-jerk leadership kills momentum. The sweet spot is deliberate action—based on trends, not tweets. And even when we do act quickly, we know it can feel sudden to those outside the decision loop. That’s why we apply structured change management: - We share the “why” behind what we’re doing. - We phase in the changes intentionally. - And we reinforce decisions with clarity, not ambiguity—because clarity is kindness. Feedback builds trust—but only if your response is thoughtful, transparent, and earned. Ask. Listen. Look for themes. Weigh. Decide. Act. Communicate. That’s how you close the loop—and build a culture that lasts.

“We have an anonymous email inbox where people can send in their questions and concerns.” “Okay… and how many have sent in their questions and concerns so far?” “No one.” This is a common story: 1. Transformation office has the great intention of getting two-way feedback (many don’t even get here, so getting to this step 1 is an achievement in itself) 2. Sets up two-way feedback loop 3. Doesn’t get any two-way feedback 4. Conclusion is that people have no questions or concerns 5. Stops doing two-way feedback loop But from what I’ve seen in companies that get it right, it’s not about setting up A two-way feedback loop - it’s about setting up the RIGHT KIND of two-way feedback loop. This is the triple-I method I’ve seen generates the most amount of two-way feedback during change and transformation initiatives: ⚡️ Instant   You need to enable instant feedback, directly in the flow of where they are receiving the communications and enablement or where the change happens. If people need to go elsewhere (like sending an email) or wait a few days on a survey to share their feedback, you’ve already lost 90% of it. 💬 Interactive No one likes sending something into an anonymous black hole and not knowing where it goes. There’s a reason LinkedIn gets more traction than your intranet - it’s social, people discuss between each other, you see others’ replies. It’s not static and one-way - it’s live and interactive. Apply the best principles from social media into your feedback loops. 👋 Informal “Please share your feedback in this short 15-minute survey” generates lower engagement than “hey, what did you think of this?” in 10/10 cases. You want to make it informal, casual and high frequency above the formal quarterly NPS survey. Informality (and humanity) is also the #1 antidote to survey fatigue. These 3 I’s are really the only way to do it that I’ve seen leads to that 4th I you’re looking for: Insights.