Most early OD interventions were human process-based interventions. These interventions are directed at improving interpersonal, intragroup, and intergroup relations. Two common human process-based intervention strategies that are still widely used are survey feedback and team building. Survey feedback is defined as the systematic feedback of survey data to groups with the intent of stimulating discussion of problem areas, generating potential solutions, and stimulating motivation for change.

This data can then be used to compare an organization’s current state with some desired state. Ideally, the result of survey feedback is that changes will be attempted to bridge the gap between the current state and desired state. Team building is a process used to improve a work group’s problem-solving ability and effectiveness. Like individuals, groups experience problems and team-building can be used to address some of these problems. There is evidence that human process-based interventions can be effective in bringing about change. One meta-analysis finds sizable effects for team building on process improvement, performance, and affect.

A later meta-analysis finds a small but statistically significant positive effect of team-building interventions on subjective measures of performance; however, the effect on objective measures of performance was not significant. It seems that evidence for the effectiveness of team building on organizational performance is fairly robust.