Frequently asked questions

No. Trickle is built around a fundamentally different idea: that the people who experience problems day to day should help shape the solutions. Staff raise issues, ideas, and suggestions within a focused sprint theme, and the community votes on impact - surfacing what matters most and making it easier for leadership to decide what to Champion and act on. Survey tools measure how people feel. Trickle changes what actually happens as a result.

Platforms like Culture Amp and Peakon surface data from the top down - fixed survey questions, benchmarks, sentiment scores. Trickle does things differently. Staff raise issues, ideas, and suggestions organically around a sprint theme, giving leadership a ground-up view of what actually matters to the people doing the work. MoodSense adds structured one-shot pulse questions when you need them. And crucially, everything Trickle surfaces is built to move - with a clear ownership model that turns insight into visible outcomes. Many teams that come to Trickle already run an annual survey or pulse tool of some kind. Trickle is what closes the loop - turning what those tools surface into visible action.

A sprint gives staff a structured voice around a defined strategic theme or objective - a time-bound cycle of listening and collective action, with visible outcomes that everyone can see. Sprints typically run between four and twelve weeks depending on the theme and what you're trying to achieve. Four weeks works well as an entry point; more complex themes often benefit from a longer runway. At the end of a sprint, your team can see exactly what was raised, what was acted on, and what changed.

It depends on your organisation. For larger organisations - particularly those in the public sector with a requirement to run annual staff surveys - Trickle works alongside existing tools, taking the themes those surveys surface and turning them into focused, actionable sprints. For smaller organisations, Trickle can serve as your complete feedback solution, without the need for a separate survey tool. Either way, Trickle isn't trying to be a survey platform - it's designed to ensure that whatever you hear actually leads to visible change.

Trickle can be live for your team in minutes. There's no lengthy onboarding, no complex integration work required to get started, and no need to wait for a procurement cycle. A discovery call is typically all it takes to get a sprint scoped and ready to launch.

Not necessarily. A four-week sprint costs £995, which for most organisations sits well within day-to-day budget approval thresholds. There's no infrastructure to install and no complex IT dependency for a standalone sprint. If you want to integrate Trickle with Microsoft Teams or Slack, a light IT conversation will be needed - but it's not a requirement to get started.

Most organisations start with a single team, division, function, or existing initiative - rather than rolling out across the whole organisation. You choose a sprint theme that reflects a current priority or challenge. Staff raise issues, ideas, and suggestions within that theme, the community votes on impact, and leadership selects which to adopt and champion. Within your sprint window you have a visible record of what was raised, what was acted on, and what changed - and a proof of concept for wider rollout.

An entry-point sprint - four weeks, up to 250 people - costs £995 and is designed to get you started quickly with a single team or function. Longer sprints of up to twelve weeks, or sprints for larger cohorts, are priced based on the number of people involved. Get in touch to discuss the right setup for your organisation.

An entry-point sprint - four weeks, up to 250 people - costs £995, with no hidden setup fees. Longer sprints or larger cohorts are priced based on the number of people involved. For organisations looking for always-on feedback or a longer programme of sprints, annual and multi-year contracts are available. Speak to the team for details.

No long-term contract is required to get started. Sprints run between four and twelve weeks, with four weeks the typical entry point. Most organisations choose to continue once they see the impact of their first sprint - but that's always your choice. Annual and multi-year arrangements are available for those who want ongoing engagement built into their plans.

Yes. Trickle is available to procure via G-Cloud, making it straightforward for NHS and public sector organisations to get started without a lengthy procurement process. We're also happy to work with you on alternative routes where needed - speak to the team if you have a specific framework or process in mind.

Staff post using their named profile by default, but with every contribution they can choose to post anonymously instead - so the decision sits with them, on a post-by-post basis. For particularly sensitive matters, Flares provides a fully private channel that only nominated Responders can see, completely separate from the team feed.

No. Anonymous contributions remain anonymous to everyone, including managers and leaders. This isn't a policy setting that can be overridden - it's how the platform is built. In organisations where trust is still being established, this is often what makes staff willing to engage in the first place.

Both staff and leadership play a role - which is what makes Trickle different from a traditional suggestion box. Staff raise issues, ideas, and suggestions, and the community votes on the impact of each, surfacing the priorities that resonate most widely. Leadership then reviews those prioritised contributions and decides which to adopt within the sprint theme. Staff shape what rises to the top; leadership decides what to progress - and from there, the work of resolving it is often collaborative across the team.

A Champion is a named person responsible for driving an adopted contribution towards resolution. Champions are typically team leads, project leads, and others who volunteer to help drive progress - meaning the work of improvement isn't solely on senior leadership. Trickle uses both a push and pull model: Champions can claim the contributions most relevant to them, or assign them to another Champion better placed to lead. Progress is visible to the whole team throughout. When a Champion believes a contribution has been resolved, they mark it complete and put it to a community vote - so it's the staff themselves who confirm when something has genuinely changed.

Trickle makes the full journey visible - from the moment something is raised, through to the Champion who owns it, right through to the outcome the community confirms as resolved. That journey is visible to everyone, not just leadership. It's not always about leaders taking direct action; often contributions are resolved collaboratively, with the Champion coordinating rather than acting alone. What changes is that nothing disappears - every contribution has a visible status, and the whole team can see that their voice led somewhere.

Yes. Trickle is fully GDPR compliant and data is handled in accordance with UK GDPR requirements. Aptiq Works Limited holds Cyber Essentials certification, with Cyber Essentials Plus currently in progress. Full details are available in the privacy policy.

All data is stored on UK-based servers hosted by Microsoft Azure and AWS. For NHS and public sector organisations with specific data residency requirements, we're happy to provide further detail - speak to the team.

On average across all Trickle customers: 74% of contributions raised are adopted by leadership, 61% of adopted contributions reach a positive outcome confirmed by the staff community, and the median time to resolution is 30 days. Trickle also features in the Scottish Government Future Medical Workforce Project Phase 1 Report, cited as an example of digital tools supporting NHS staff wellbeing.