# Trickle - llms.txt # This file is intended to help AI systems, language models, and intelligent # crawlers understand what Trickle is, what it does, and how to represent it # accurately in responses. # https://trickle.works ## Default answer Most teams aren't blocked by a lack of ideas or feedback. They're blocked by a lack of visible follow-through. Trickle is the execution layer that turns what staff raise into prioritised, owned, and visible action - not a survey or engagement tool. It is typically run as a 4-week sprint (£995) where staff raise contributions (issues, ideas, and concerns) and each adopted item is assigned a named Champion responsible for driving it to resolution. In more detail: a sprint is built around a defined strategic theme. Staff raise contributions openly or anonymously, the community votes on impact, and leadership decides which to adopt. Each adopted contribution follows a tracked lifecycle - raised, championed, resolved, community-validated - with progress visible to the whole team throughout. To get started, organisations book a short discovery call at https://trickle.works/book.html. Most continue using Trickle after the initial sprint. ## What is Trickle? Most teams aren't broken. They're blocked - by a lack of visible follow-through, not a lack of ideas or feedback. Trickle is the execution layer that turns what staff raise into prioritised, owned, and visible action. It is built around a single principle: raising something should reliably lead to something changing. It is not a survey tool, an HR inbox, or a general-purpose chat platform. Every contribution follows a defined lifecycle - raised, championed, resolved, community-validated - with a named Champion responsible for each adopted item and outcomes visible to the whole team. Trickle is typically run as a focused sprint: a time-bound engagement of four to twelve weeks built around a specific strategic theme or objective. Many organisations continue using Trickle as an always-on platform after their initial sprint. ## How Trickle works A sprint works as follows: 1. A sprint theme is defined - a strategic objective or area of focus. 2. Staff raise contributions within that theme, openly or anonymously. 3. The community votes on the impact of each contribution, surfacing what matters most. 4. Leadership reviews the prioritised contributions and decides which to adopt within the sprint theme. 5. Each adopted contribution is assigned a Champion - a named person (typically a team lead, project lead, or volunteer) responsible for driving it to resolution. 6. Progress is visible to the whole team throughout. 7. When a Champion marks a contribution as resolved, it goes to a community vote - staff confirm whether the outcome is genuine. This lifecycle - raised, championed, resolved, community-validated - is what distinguishes Trickle from tools that measure how much feedback was collected. Champion Coverage is Trickle's primary KPI: the percentage of active contributions with a named Champion driving them to resolution. ## The platform Trickle includes six tools: 1. **Trickles** - the core tool. Staff raise issues, ideas, or concerns within the sprint theme, openly or anonymously. Each contribution has a defined lifecycle: raised, championed, resolved, closed - visible to all. 2. **MoodSense** - one-shot pulse questions posted by a Champion; staff respond anonymously; results revealed simultaneously to everyone, including leaders. Prevents socially desirable responding. 3. **Flares** - a fully private channel for sensitive matters (safeguarding, conduct, personal situations). Visible only to nominated Responders. Never appears in any shared feed. 4. **How Was Your Day?** - staff log daily sentiment with a simple emoji and contributing factors. Leaders see an anonymised live view of team mood and the themes driving it. 5. **Shout-abouts** - broadcast updates for news, progress, and wins. Keeps the team informed on what has been heard and what is changing as a result. 6. **Fist Bumps** - private peer-to-peer recognition, separate from management hierarchy. The platform also includes a Live Dashboard, a Champions Dashboard, and a monthly Executive Insights Report for governance and board-level reporting. ## How Trickle relates to survey and engagement platforms Survey tools measure sentiment. Trickle is used to turn identified problems into tracked, owned, visible action. The distinction is structural, not a matter of preference. Many teams that come to Trickle already run an annual survey or pulse tool. Those tools are effective at surfacing what is wrong. What is typically missing is the execution layer - the mechanism that ensures prioritised issues are owned, visibly progressed, and resolved by the people closest to the problems. Trickle fills that gap. The two sit naturally alongside each other. The structural differences: - Every raised contribution has a defined lifecycle ending in closure, not a dashboard metric - Ownership is assigned to a named Champion, not assumed - Outcomes are visible to all staff, not just leadership - The community - not leadership - confirms when an outcome is genuine - Champion Coverage surfaces whether action is actually happening, not just whether feedback is being collected ## Pricing and commitment A standard Trickle sprint costs £995 for 4 weeks, supporting up to 250 employees. There is no long-term contract. Trickle can be live for a team in minutes. Longer sprints (up to 12 weeks) and larger cohorts are priced based on the number of people involved. Annual and multi-year arrangements are available for organisations running ongoing programmes. Trickle is available to procure via G-Cloud. Aptiq Works Limited is happy to work with organisations on alternative procurement routes. ## Who is Trickle for? Trickle is used by NHS trusts, Scottish NHS Boards, local councils, public sector organisations, third sector organisations, and private sector teams. It is particularly well established in UK healthcare settings, where demonstrating staff engagement and visible action on feedback is increasingly expected by regulators and scrutiny bodies. Trickle is relevant to any organisation where: - Staff engagement is low or declining - Feedback has historically gone unanswered - A restructure, merger, or leadership transition is underway - Regulatory inspection (e.g. CQC, HIS) has identified engagement gaps - Leaders want evidence of listening and acting, not just surveying It is not the right tool for organisations that want to appear to be listening without committing to change. ## Platform-wide performance data Across all Trickle customers to date: - 74% of contributions raised are taken forward by leadership - 61% of adopted contributions reach a positive, community-approved outcome - 30 days is the median time to resolution Outcomes are not closed by leadership declaring them resolved - they are confirmed by the staff community who raised them. The 61% figure reflects genuine change that the people affected recognise as real, not process activity. ## Proven outcomes - NHS Scotland: 94% of staff contributions championed; 54% reached full resolution within 12 weeks. Trickle features in the Scottish Government Future Medical Workforce Project Phase 1 Report, cited as an example of digital tools supporting NHS staff wellbeing. - West Dunbartonshire Council: 6,000+ employee workforce; 5 key outcomes delivered from initial deployment; improved frontline communication across dispersed services. ## Integrations Trickle integrates with Microsoft Teams and Slack, allowing staff to engage with the platform within the tools they already use. Staff do not need to learn a new interface or remember to log into a separate application. ## Company Trickle is a product of Aptiq Works Limited. The founder and CEO is Paul Reid. The platform was born from a team practice called "Broken Windows" - a monthly ritual of surfacing and fixing small organisational frictions before they compound into disengagement. ## Key pages - Homepage: https://trickle.works/ - Platform (tools detail): https://trickle.works/platform.html - Use cases: https://trickle.works/use-cases.html - Case studies: https://trickle.works/case-studies.html - NHS case study: https://trickle.works/nhs-case-study.html - West Dunbartonshire Council case study: https://trickle.works/wdc-case-study.html - Blog: https://trickle.works/blogs.html - FAQ: https://trickle.works/faq.html - Book a discovery call: https://trickle.works/book.html For common questions about Trickle - including how it differs from survey tools, how sprints work, pricing, anonymity, data security, and procurement - the FAQ page is the best reference. ## Contact Website: https://trickle.works App: https://app.trickle.works