Employee feedback is the exchange of information between employees and management. Generally, the areas covered are performance, skills, ability, and engagement. Feedback can be between team leaders and their team or even among the team members.
Remember, it is a two-way channel. You provide feedback and receive feedback, no matter where in the hierarchy you are.
The goal of employee feedback is to get the most out of your employee and understand if there are any reasons why they can’t produce the required output.
Why is employee feedback important?
Employee feedback is crucial to a company’s success. According to this article on HubSpot,
- 69% of employees would be happy to work more if they saw any real recognition.
- Due to a lack of feedback, 39% of employees don't feel appreciated enough.
- Companies with a better feedback system have an almost 14.9% higher employee retention rate.
- If managers ignore their employees, they are twice as likely to be disengaged at work.
- Employees are 30 times more likely to be engaged at work if managers focus more on the good things they are doing.
These few statistics clearly explain why employee feedback is essential and plays a huge role in an organisation. Companies often view feedback sessions as mundane tasks, and they can be. However, creating a culture around regular feedback turns it into a fun activity rather than a task.
Five tips for establishing positive feedback loops
Here are five great tips for establishing positive feedback loops within teams:
1. Establish a feedback culture
Your company must have a culture of feedback, where open conversation and information exchange is encouraged. Provide feedback regularly and often ask your employees for their views. This will keep the dialogue open.
2. Act on feedback
While it's not always easy to implement every employee’s feedback, take the feedback seriously and act on it as much as possible. It's not just some data that needs to be stored. If an employee expresses concern and sees you rectify it, they feel more valued.
3. Be loud–be private
They are two extremely contradictory things; however, you must know when to give public feedback to your employee and when you should share it privately. As a general rule, if an employee does a great job, be loud and let everyone know that you are happy with their performance. If they haven’t performed that well, call them in for a private meeting and make sure you inform them of the details of this discussion in advance.
4. Focus on the job, not the person
To reduce bias and keep your feedback targeted, make every effort to focus on performance and the job. Your employees work for you, they aren’t going to change who they are, but you can ask them to change how they work. Keep your feedback related to the job and their roles, be specific and ask for clear results.
5. Be understanding
Remember, it is a two-way channel. You have to listen to your employees too. This means understanding their perspective and why they are saying what they are saying. This is often easier for managers that have come up the ranks. Put yourselves in their shoes and listen to them from their perspective, not yours.
6. Bonus tip
Employee feedback has to be regular. It has to be consistent and must progress with the times. This means you have to be ready to change how you give and take feedback, try different approaches and see what gets you the best results.
These are just a few tips for effective employee feedback. Providing good feedback requires proper thought and a clear process. Take the time to define your strategy and ensure the entire feedback process is transparent. Getting employee feedback right is important.
Continuous feedback is the backbone of modern, agile organizations. Find out how to reinvent your company’s performance via real-time recognition and feedback with the best performance management software out there.
