How to Share Feedback or Report a Concern

Communication is one of the most important things we do as a Club. For leaders, one of the critical forms of communication is feedback from participants, both positive and not-so-positive. However, it can be very uncomfortable for a participant to share feedback with a trip leader or instructor.

The CMC has three options for providing feedback or for documenting concerns - the Trip or Course Activity Feedback form, the Incident Report, and the NavEx report for reporting serious concerns such as harassment or serious behavioral issues. This article will focus on trip/course activity feedback, future articles will look at the other two.

The feedback form is the primary method for participants to share their views/concerns of what happened on a trip or during a course. Use this form to share what went well, what could be improved, or any safety/behavior concerns. An e-mail containing a link to this form should be automatically generated when the leader closes the activity. If you do not receive this e-mail and you have feedback to submit, you can go to the Activities page of your CMC profile, there should be either a Give note by the activity in the list (Figures 1 and 2) or a Feedback section in the Activity itself (Figure 3).

Of particular note is the Safety Concerns section of the feedback form. If you click on this section or make an entry here (Figure 4), an e-mail is automatically sent to the CMC's Risk Management Working Group and to specified leaders in the club. This e-mail identifies the Trip Name and the Date. The automatic distribution ensures that safety concerns (either physical or emotional) are brought to leadership's attention immediately. If you have any sort of safety concern, please use this section to submit it and, if you click on Safety Concern, please provide supporting text.

More general feedback is reviewed on a periodic basis by Trip Leaders and Lead Instructors, as well as by designated individuals for groups and sections. Positive feedback is used to make decisions such as leader recognition, while other types of feedback (concerns, suggestions, etc) may be used to improve trips and courses. In any case, it helps if you include at least the leader's first name in every section of the feedback, since periodic reviews may initially involve a look at feedback for ALL leaders in a group or section. Being specific allows the reviewer to quickly zero in on individual items of feedback.

Feedback is anonymous, this allows you to provide honest observations and opinions on what happened. In the case of safety issues or serious concerns, leadership may make an effort to reach out to all participants in a trip or course to try and gather more details, but a submitting participant's name is not shared with Trip Leader or Instructor.

It is important to note that the vast majority of CMC trips and courses are incident-free and the feedback is generally very positive. However, we do not want to overlook any opportunity to improve the skills of leaders, the safety of participants, and the content of course. Your voice DOES matter and it IS heard. We highly encourage all participants to submit feedback.