Employee Feedback
Employee feedback is critical for letting workers know their strengths, weaknesses, and development goals. It’s equally critical for managers to understand how to deliver such feedback in an optimal way. Being able to genuinely hear, internalize, and implement these comments can have a powerful impact on individual performance, and with it, that of the entire organization.
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What Is Employee Feedback?
Employee feedback is made up of recommendations, comments, compliments, criticisms, instructions, and grades provided by managers to employees. This is in contrast to other types of employee feedback, such as “reverse feedback”, (AKA upward feedback or feedback to managers), where employees comment on managers.
Feedback can be given in many settings. Every organization should have official employee review sessions at least once per year, but half-year and even quarterly reviews are common. This is particularly true for startups and other companies experiencing rapid changes.
Learning and development initiatives also require employee feedback. Before, during, and after an L&D program, HR relies heavily on direct managers to assess employee performance, attitude toward learning, and skill requirements.
Employee feedback also happens organically, or informally. Any recommendation given by a manager to a worker is considered feedback, and so it really is something that happens all the time. The question is, how should it be given?
Employee Feedback Best Practices
Managers are human, and neither are there perfect employees. Managers can be tempted to use feedback sessions to take out their frustrations on someone. It’s a tendency like this that makes “bad manager” one of the top reasons for quitting a job.
However good managers also make mistakes during feedback sessions. Even when they are not conscious of this, it’s often the case that managers provide feedback about things that are:
- Ancient history
- Beyond the employee’s control
- Part of a problem that goes beyond the individual worker
- Issues that are important to the manager, but that don’t reflect any problems with productivity or behavior
To make the most out of an important opportunity, feedback should instead focus on the following elements:
Actionable. Another way of describing constructive feedback is its purpose of “going somewhere” – a change in behavior, improvement through reskilling/upskilling, asking for help, etc. As part of their advice, managers should not only mention what the problem is but also how to fix it.
Measurable. Actions taken in response to feedback should be assessed. It’s easy to tell a production employee to increase the number of units they produce. But what happens in the case of qualitative challenges, such as clear communication or a better attitude? In these situations, it can help to use a number of stakeholders to aid in assessment. For example, a manager can ask both another manager and a senior employee to review before-and-after output.
Consistent. There should be agreement among managers about what constitutes good performance. If an employee thinks they are doing great, but a new boss brings the roof down on them, that’s a managerial problem. Managers need to communicate and establish standards, plus consult with each other before giving feedback to new charges.
Empathetic. An important opportunity for showing empathy skills is during a feedback session. Delivering negative feedback without a critical tone will help the message be accepted more easily. Adding a compliment or two doesn’t hurt either.
Regular. It’s a good idea to provide feedback regularly, and more often than the annual review. Some companies, such as Google (see below), encourage continuous feedback as a basis for semi-annual performance reports. And this is not as resource-intensive as it sounds. For example, during a one-on-one meeting, employees should be anticipating that comments are on the way. When said in the right tone, this feedback will become an expected and far more useful tool for improving performance. In addition, this avoids more stress placed on the employee if they are given a negative review when they are not expecting it.
As a final note, managers should think seriously about their role in employee performance prior to any critical comment. What could they have done to improve a worker’s output before feedback was necessary? A classic example is a project that is done unsatisfactorily by an employee but is only addressed during an official review. Instead, the manager should have made comments immediately after seeing the results of the worker’s efforts.
The Role of HR in Employee Feedback Programs
While it’s true that feedback is essentially a way for employees and their managers to communicate, HR plays a vital part in making sure that everything runs smoothly and actually has a purpose. Here are a few of the steps that HR should take to optimize their feedback process:
Connect to Employee Development
Any HR professional knows that feedback is part of employee performance reviews and relates to promotions, bonuses, pay increases, and other conditions of work. But it also has a broader role. Does a feedback report reveal that an employee lacks a certain skill? Has the employee been trained but still experiences problems in certain areas? HR can use a feedback report as the basis for proactively addressing an employee’s challenges.
Explain the Importance of Feedback
A common conception of negative feedback is that employees don’t want to hear it. But this is untrue. With the right soft skills, managers can deliver feedback that helps the employee to grow professionally. With this in mind, managers will also be less reluctant to critique worker performance on the spot and face-to-face.
Ensure Safety
While in an ideal world, everyone would be comfortable with all aspects of the feedback process, this is often not the case. There are some people who have strong “agreeableness” traits and will be reluctant to speak critically of someone no matter how deserved it is. Moreover, you might not be aware of the nature of the relationship between employee and manager; there could be some tension between them that would result in pressure on one or both of them if negative comments are exchanged.
For this reason, it’s important to make sure that your feedback process includes an option for anonymous reporting, particularly when it is upward. Plus, if you notice that a manager has nothing but positive things to say about their team, you might consider sending them to an assertiveness course as a way to improve their management style.
Take Action
Dealing with feedback isn’t only tough on employees and managers. When HR sees a problem, it needs to act as well. This does not always mean threats against workers who are underperforming. For instance, if an employee is consistently late, it might take a sympathetic HR staffer to find out that the worker is having challenges at home. In addition, “action” also includes providing recognition for workers who have been doing a great job lately. Note that, when you take feedback seriously, employees are more likely to, on their own initiative, perform an act that benefits their employer.
Have a Universal System
Templates and forms are essential – but is everyone on the same page? In large companies, it sometimes happens that one division is using a feedback process that is markedly different from others. This interferes with consistent employee reviews, promotions, and salary increases.
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Why Is Employee Feedback Important to Employees?
The need for feedback is obvious from the viewpoint of a manager. They need performance, and through feedback, employees understand how to deliver it. However feedback is also necessary in the eyes of workers.
Information
Managers are usually more informed about the “big picture” than lower-level employees. In addition, an experienced manager has a better feel for what good performance looks like, as well as the key skills and behavior that produce it. For employees to understand how their work stacks up against their peers, and how it meets organizational goals, they rely on managers.
Expectations
Effective feedback is forward-looking. Once again, a manager should know what strategies and changes are in the making, and how these will affect daily tasks. For employees to understand what challenges to expect (and prepare for), managers must keep them updated.
Trust
Feedback makes employees feel that managers are trustworthy. By keeping employees in the loop about what changes the worker needs to make, managers ensure that everyone will perform as needed. This is in contrast to a manager who waits with feedback until there are real problems, and everyone suffers. For reasons like this, companies with regular and meaningful feedback programs have an employee engagement rate of 80%.
Professionalism
Most workers actually like to receive feedback because it can be used as a basis for employee growth as they advance within an organization. Feedback is essential for employee motivation because it gives workers the information that they need to improve their soft skills and knowledge as to become better professionals. This is true even for positive feedback because it lets the worker know that they are doing well in a particular area, and can now focus on developing other areas. By comparison, when feedback is lacking, it gives the impression to the employee that managers aren’t interested in helping.
Employee Feedback Examples
There is an art to giving employee feedback. One of the secrets is to develop rapport with an employee by including positive comments. This is a must-do for any annual review, but can also be beneficial during less formal reviews and feedback that is delivered in the moment. Positive employee feedback examples can include situations where:
- Individual performance has been good
- The employee worked late, covered for a missing coworker, or did something beyond their normal duties
- Showed exemplary skill in a particular area
- Advised and supported a coworker
In each situation, there are certain positive employee feedback phrases that make a real difference. It can be as basic as saying “great” instead of “good”; mentioning how their effort benefitted the manager and the team; and talking about specific skills.
But the most genuine feedback is something that is highly personalized. A manager who can detail the challenges that the employee overcame, or how they resolved a specific problem for the department, will come across as more honest and appreciative.
Of course, there is the other side of feedback. Hearing that your work is not up to standard can be hard to take – depending on how that message is delivered. But talking about employee weaknesses and poor attitudes is also hard on a manager. In fact, according to Harvard Business School, even though many employees welcome feedback, managers are often not prepared to deliver it.
But showing a supportive attitude can help the medicine go down smoother. There are no “problems,” only challenges; if an employee fails a task, the discussion should be about doing better the next time; and correcting any weakness that the employee has is a task that the manager is also responsible for.
Real-World Examples of Effective Feedback Programs
The reasons and facts behind employee feedback programs seem right, but do they work in practice? Here are some useful examples of major organizations that are applying employee feedback in transformative ways. You will notice that feedback seems to affect the entire organization positively, showing that its benefits go beyond individual performance.
Cargill
Cargill is a US food producer and distributor that employs 160,000 internationally. At one time, Cargill relied on an annual performance review as its main feedback tool because it felt that examining past mistakes was the way to go.
But then the company decided to take a different approach. It created an “Everyday Performance Management” system. This involves moving from yearly review sessions to daily conversations that involve feedback and positive reinforcement. Comments are focused on future behavior, not past mistakes, and feedback occurs whenever it is relevant.
The results were astonishing. Cargill experienced a 40% improvement in performance and almost 70% of employees reported an increased sense of feeling valued.
The Israeli Air Force
This one seems out of place in the human resources industry, but the Israeli Air Force (IAF) actually follows many modern HR principles as part of its “company culture”. For example, it provides equal opportunities for both men and women to be pilots, and there are even female pilots in top fighter units. This diversity is one of the reasons why the IAF is considered among the best in the world.
Another reason is its famous feedback system. No matter what rank a pilot has, or how good their record is, every mission is followed by a feedback session. Even if the mission was considered perfect, the IAF believes that there is always room for improvement. It also uses a system of reverse feedback. Pilots of even junior rank can comment on and criticize the performance of the most senior officers.
Another world leader in their particular field is Google. In 2022, Google revamped its employee feedback system – based on employee feedback stating disapproval for the old ways. It now holds promotions and performance ratings surveys twice a year. However, manager-employee feedback sessions occur on a much more regular basis. It’s also interesting that Google has a reverse feedback policy that uses a set of descriptive statements from which to choose as ways to evaluate managers.
The company’s productivity levels are well-known, but it is concepts like their employee feedback mechanism that lead to Google’s frequent receiving of top grades as a great place to work.
Employee Feedback Templates
There is no set way to provide feedback. Some managers and HR staff simply jot down a few notes and use them in a conversation. Others want to check off every box and have a customized form. There are also plenty of templates out there to give you a basic idea of which points to hit, often with spaces for notes where you can include things that the form does not. One important idea is to have the employee sign the form to show that the manager delivered the comments, which were understood by the employee.
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Setting Up Feedback Skills Development
On both sides of the equation, skills are essential to reducing the need for negative feedback. And, when having tough conversations, skills also play a vital role. That’s why L&D programs are a powerful way to remedy any shortcomings. But, to ensure they run as efficiently as possible, consider the following best practices in preparation:
Upskill in Advance
When a worker receives negative feedback, it’s often because they lack certain workplace skills. To make sure that employees are ready for any job they take on, L&D-based initiatives such as career management can work wonders. If any deficiencies are noticed after the employee has started, analysis using a skills matrix, followed by continuous professional development, can improve the situation.
Arrange for Feedback Training Sessions
To better develop the communication skills that support a good feedback process, managers can turn to coaches and mentors. They will often advise managers on how to optimize skills, which can include their participation in employee development courses (see below). Similarly, to avoid any bias that might be getting in the way of a truly honest review, DEIB concepts might help.
Coordinate Efforts
As mentioned, feedback should be actionable. But, if an employee’s challenges can’t be addressed by their manager, then what happens? HR must keep managers updated about the professional development courses that might be relevant to the people on their team. Moving forward, HR can reduce conflict by ensuring that courses are held at times that do not interfere with regular work schedules or help by finding temporary replacements for workers who are taking courses.
L&D for Feedback Leadership Skills
Is “leadership skills” the right term? For companies that believe in the Growth Mindset, the answer is yes. A leader can be anybody who takes initiative and points out ways to improve, no matter what role they play in a company. Plus, feedback in many modern companies flows in all directions. So, in a way, any employee who provides feedback is acting as a leader. To help them build confidence and ability, there are a number of related skills to develop, including:
Communication Skills
This has been mentioned already and is critical. Feedback can be delivered in myriad ways: in a report, as part of a team meeting, or even in front of superiors. Learning how to provide clear and logical arguments related to feedback through any number of media is an essential part of this skill, which is also a basic aspect of productivity for all employees.
Active Listening
All of us want to hear positive things about our performance. But when feedback is negative, it’s common for employees to tune out. This means they aren’t listening to what is probably advice meant to help them. By building active listening skills, workers are better able to make the most of a feedback session and improve their performance.
Time Management
Being on time is a challenge for many workplace activities, including arrival at the office, submitting tasks, and completing your work as part of a team. In the home, time management also lets you get personal things done so that you can start your working day off right. By building this skill, employees can improve many aspects of their professional and private lives.
Problem-Solving
A good manager will work with their employees to address performance issues in a constructive way. Central to this idea are problem-solving skills, which enable stakeholders on both sides of the table to suggest means of improvement so as to make the most of valuable feedback.
Act on Feedback with Growthspace Skills
No two feedback reviews are the same, because no two employees have the same skill requirements. For companies where even dozens of workers need to boost their abilities, delivering L&D is extremely complex, if not impossible.
That’s why there’s Growthspace, a completely scalable talent development platform that matches employees to experts and experiences. With Growthspace, your people can gain the precise workplace skills that they need according to the goals you set.
