Acknowledging comments

Knowing you’re being listened to is an essential part of any conversation. It’s no wonder then, that sharing feedback confidentially – as is the norm with employee engagement surveys – often doesn’t feel like a dialogue that will lead to action.

Taking the time to raise an issue you care about and not knowing if anyone has read your words can be very disheartening. Yet, in history, those gathering the feedback have had little choice.

At Peakon we set out to change this with the acknowledgments option. We now see that this simple tool is one of the biggest drivers of high participation in survey rounds, and also how the quality of feedback (the level of detail, and helpfulness) can be greatly improved when acknowledgments show people they are being listened to.  

This article covers:

• How to acknowledge
• Filtering acknowledged comments

How to acknowledge

People leaders have the ability to choose from one of five responses by clicking Acknowledge:

• Great idea
• Thanks for sharing
• I agree
•  Working on it
• Would love to talk in person

Managers can acknowledge and respond to all comments they can access, whether they're from live survey rounds, or survey rounds in the past.

An employee that provides feedback will receive an email notification (with a randomly generated delay) when a manager acknowledges their comment. Employees can also access their acknowledgments in their personal dashboard.

Considerations

• Once a manager acknowledges a comment, it's not possible to undo the action.
• Employees can't reply to an acknowledgment, although they can reply when a manager starts a conversation.
• Employees without an email address on their employee record can't receive acknowledgment notifications, although managers can still acknowledge their comments to avoid distinguishing between kiosk and email employees.

Filtering acknowledged comments

You can filter comments you have acknowledged by using the Acknowledged filter, then selecting Only comments I’ve acknowledged or Only comments I haven't acknowledged.

It's currently not possible to filter by comments other people leaders have acknowledged. However, you can:

• See the number of acknowledgments on each comment.
• See comment interaction metrics for each leader in the Manager Usage Metrics report (see Reviewing your manager usage metrics).