How to Respond to Anonymous Feedback

Feeling stressed about responding to anonymous comments? Here are tips on how you might use and respond to anonymous feedback.

Pulse Check® Reports often contain anonymous feedback and comments that you as a school administrator want to follow up on but aren't exactly sure how to address. Since you can't follow up with the family or staff member individually, here are a few tips on school-wide responses to let your families and staff know you are listening:

1.  Use your Possip 360 script or school-wide communication:   Use your 360 Script (here's a refresher on how to find it!) to communicate high-level trends to your parent body and/or staff.You can address comments left anonymously and also remind people to share their names if they are seeking feedback directly. This is also a good place to acknowledge comments (whether anonymous or not) that you want to recognize but can't necessarily solve immediately.  Both 360 scripts and school-wide communications give you the opportunity to also send quick links to resources. Be sure to reference that the information you provide comes as a response to the Pulse Check.   

2.  Create a follow-up Bonus Question:  If you had a lot of anonymous comments on a topic, consider writing a Bonus Question to gather more information. This will also allow you to track if this is a common concern. When creating the BQ, let your community know that this is a follow-up to anonymous feedback. This encourages the families or staff members to continue to share and hopefully gain confidence in providing their name if personal follow-up is really the best course of action.

3. Consult your Customer Service Representative. Our team can suggest more options such as limiting the ability for your respondents to answer anonymously.