Guidance

Encourage employee development through actionable steps

Published 4 March 2026

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

Purpose of this action

The aim of this action is to give employees clear steps to help them develop and reach their full potential.

Evidence suggests this may be particularly important for women, who may be more likely than men to receive vague feedback.^{[footnote 1]} This lack of clarity may hold back their careers.^{[footnote 2]}

You may want to choose this action if you have:

• low rates of women moving into more senior roles
• fewer women staying at your organisation
• more women who seem to stay at certain levels

Benefits and evidence

We currently have less high-quality evidence supporting this action than other actions. We are actively building our evidence base, and will continue to review and update this action. From April 2026, organisations will be able to share evidence with us about evidence-based actions to support this process.

When all employees get specific advice on how to develop, your organisation can make the most of its whole workforce. This approach may help improve gender equality because it addresses potential systematic differences which may exist in how managers provide feedback to men and women.

Providing actionable advice may show that you care about the success of everyone you employ.^{[footnote 3]} This may improve your workplace culture and morale.

Why vague feedback can hinder progress

Some research suggests that women are more likely than men to receive vague comments. This type of feedback may be less useful because it may not tell an employee:^{[footnote 4][footnote 5]}

• which of their actions met the business values
• how their work helps the business reach its goals
• what they need to do to get a promotion

Vague feedback may lead to lower performance ratings for women.^{[footnote 6]}

Focusing on the future

Many performance reviews focus on what someone did in the past. While this is common, it may be less likely to lead to future improvements. Employees may find advice more useful when it is critical, actionable, and looks toward the future.^{[footnote 7]}

Implementing this action

To encourage employee development, you could consider the following steps:

• train managers on how to give effective and actionable feedback
• give managers written guidance to support their training
• offer this training to all employees so they can give better feedback 
• share specific prompts for staff to use, such as “What is one thing I should do more of to reach the next level?”
• ask managers to hold separate meetings for development advice – it can be helpful for staff to receive this advice through a different route than their standard performance review
• encourage managers to write feedback of a similar length and detail for all team members

• ask senior leaders to model these new processes to help everyone engage with them

• share the specific business results or behaviours needed for each job grade
• ensure all employees know the criteria used to measure their performance

Tracking progress

You might want to consider tracking the progress of this action by measuring:

• employees’ awareness and understanding of their development goals and organisational opportunities, and how useful they find their feedback
• managers’ understanding of how to provide effective feedback and development advice
• the rate in which employees progress from middle to senior management over time, with a specific focus on sex – including the combination of sex and other characteristics (such as ethnicity or disability status) to highlight specific trends for different groups of men and women
• retention rates among employees, particularly high-performing women
• changes in employee’s knowledge and skills over time, for example through a skills inventory

Managers can also ask their team for feedback directly, but you should not rely on this alone. Employees may not always feel they can give an honest answer unless their responses are anonymous.

Where possible, you should compare any data you gather with ‘baseline’ data from previous years.

Data privacy

Some or all of the equality information you collect is likely to be ‘special category personal data’, meaning it has special legal protections. 

Ensure that you are complying with the UK’s data protection legislation when you collect and analyse employees’ data.

Get advice and approval from your organisation’s privacy or data protection expert before you start.

1. The Behavioural Insights Team (2025). How to improve gender equality in the workplace: actions for employers.  ↩

2. Correll S and Simard C (2016) Research. Vague feedback is holding women back  ↩

3. Longenecker CO and Nykodym N (1996). Public sector performance appraisal effectiveness: A case study. Public Personnel Management, 25(2), 151–164. ↩

4. The Behavioural Insights Team (2025). How to improve gender equality in the workplace: actions for employers.  ↩

5. Correll S and Simard C (2016) Research. Vague feedback is holding women back  ↩

6. The Behavioural Insights Team (2025). How to improve gender equality in the workplace: actions for employers.  ↩

7. Blunden H, Jaewon Y, Kristal AS and Whillans AV ‘Soliciting Advice Rather Than Feedback Yields More Developmental, Critical, and Actionable Input.’ Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-021, August 2019. (Revised April 2021.). ↩