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Webinar tip · 22 October 2026

Women get vaguer feedback than men

Culture Amp data shows men get more specific, work-based feedback. A structured format such as SBI helps close the gap.

Charlotte MosleySenior People Scientist, Culture Amp

Specific feedback is the kind people can act on. Charlotte Mosley of Culture Amp shared research showing it is not shared out equally.

The gap

Men tend to receive more specific, work-based feedback. Women are more likely to receive vague or personality-based comments. In engineering, Culture Amp's data showed 66% of the feedback men received was work-related, compared with 53% for women.

Mosley said the bias creeps in most where review forms give managers a blank box to fill. A structure such as situation, behaviour, impact (SBI) keeps the feedback on the work.

What to do this week

  • Replace open comment boxes in your review forms with SBI prompts.
  • Spot-check a sample of written feedback for personality words versus specific behaviours.
  • Give managers one worked SBI example to copy.

Source: Culture Amp research, as presented in the webinar.

Read the clip transcript

what we see consistently is that men often receive more positive feedback than women, but crucially, they also tend to receive more specific and work-based feedback. Women, on the other hand, are more likely to receive vague or personality feedback. So, in engineering, for example, that feedback gap is 13%, with men receiving 66% of work-related feedback, whilst women receive just 53%. And what we know is that when this gender bias creeps into the feedback exchange, it can really leave women with unequal access to constructive feedback. What we do see is that where you do have that kind of blank box and it's just filling your feedback here, that's when that gender bias can really kind of start to creep in. And so providing something that's a bit more structured, so something around what we call like the SBI model, so describing the situation, the behavior and the impact, that can really help mitigate against some of this gender bias that we see.

From the webinar · Mar 2021

Driving Employee Growth and Development Through Negative Feedback

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