The real value of key themes emerges over time as patterns become visible. This guide explains how to read your theme data and use it to make better management decisions.
Viewing Theme Frequency
The Key Themes overview page shows each theme alongside a count of how many times it has been linked to an entity. Themes that appear frequently are the topics that dominate your management conversations.
A high frequency is not inherently good or bad. "Career Development" appearing often could mean you are having productive growth conversations. "Workload Concerns" appearing frequently might indicate a systemic problem that needs addressing.
Tracking Trends Over Time
Beyond simple counts, look at how theme frequency changes over time. A theme that was quiet for months but is suddenly appearing in every catchup signals a new or emerging issue.
Similarly, a theme that was once very active but has gone quiet might mean the underlying issue has been resolved, or it might mean the topic has been avoided. Context from your catchup notes will help you interpret the trend correctly.
Co-Occurrence
Pay attention to which themes appear together. If "Workload Concerns" and "Wellbeing" are frequently tagged on the same catchups, that correlation tells you something about the relationship between workload and team health in your team.
Co-occurring themes can reveal root causes. What looks like a communication problem might actually be a workload problem if those themes consistently appear together.
AI-Powered Theme Detection
The AI suggestions are recommendations, not automatic tags. Review each suggestion and decide whether it accurately reflects the conversation before accepting it. Over time, the suggestions become more relevant as the system learns from your data.
Using Patterns to Drive Action
When you spot a significant pattern, decide what to do about it:
- Frequent negative theme - if "Workload Concerns" is consistently high, it warrants a conversation with your own manager about resourcing, or a team discussion about prioritisation.
- Emerging theme - a newly frequent theme might need proactive attention before it becomes a bigger issue.
- Declining theme - a theme that has decreased in frequency after you took action is evidence that your intervention worked.
- Cross-team pattern - if the same theme appears across multiple team members, it is likely a systemic issue rather than an individual one.
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