Circles
Small peer groups with weekly anonymous reflection prompts. Circles build psychological safety through shared vulnerability, surfacing themes that surveys miss.
What Are Circles?
A circle is a small, stable group of colleagues (the size is configurable per circle) who share a weekly reflection prompt. Individual responses are never shown to other members, only the themes extracted once the round closes. Over time, circles build the habits of candor and mutual support that underlie psychological safety.
Circles vs. Surveys
Surveys measure sentiment at a point in time. Circles build it. Where a pulse survey asks 'Do you feel you belong?', a circle prompt asks 'Share one moment this week when you felt, or didn't feel, like you belonged.' Responses are qualitative and never shown to peers individually. The data feeds into belonging scores; the practice itself changes culture.
How Circles Work
Each circle operates on a weekly cycle.
Prompt assigned
A new prompt is assigned to each circle at the start of the week. Prompts are curated to be open-ended, psychologically safe, and relevant to belonging themes: identity, recognition, inclusion, or team dynamics.
Members respond
Each member has until the end of the response window to submit a free-text reflection. Responses are encrypted at rest. No other circle member, manager, or admin can read an individual reflection; only the round's extracted themes are ever surfaced.
Summary shared
Once the response window closes, ClimaHQ extracts the top themes from the round using statistical text analysis (TF-IDF), with no AI involved. A summary is shared with the circle and, in aggregate, with HR admins. The raw text of individual responses is never shared with anyone.
Anonymity in Circles
No circle member ever sees who wrote what: raw responses are never shared, only extracted themes.
Technical Guarantee
Individual reflections are never surfaced to peers, managers, or HR admins, only the themed summary generated once the response window closes. Access to any underlying record is restricted by role and encrypted at rest.
What the Circle Sees
After the response window closes, circle members see the extracted themes for the round, not the individual reflections behind them. No raw response is ever shown to anyone outside ClimaHQ's systems, and no theme is attributed to a specific person.
Circle Summaries
Every closed circle round produces a summary available to both circle members and HR admins.
Theme Extraction
ClimaHQ uses TF-IDF statistical analysis to identify the most significant terms and phrases across all responses in a round. Themes are displayed as a ranked list. No AI or language model is involved: the same data always produces the same themes.
HR Admin View
HR admins can view aggregate circle activity (active circles, participation rates, and top themes across all circles) from the HR dashboard. They cannot access individual response text. The active circles count and top themes feed directly into compliance reports.
Build belonging through conversation
Circles are included on all ClimaHQ plans. Start a circle with any team in minutes.