How to Encourage Feedback Learning at Work
Statistics show that employees are, by and large, not receiving constructive, critical feedback frequently enough to increase their performance.
When you think of feedback at work, those yearly assessment and feedback forms flash across your mind. Although these annual performance reviews are helpful, it can also be helpful for managers to look beyond them.
Employees want their work to be recognized. They want to know how they’re doing and if what they do is effective enough.
Feedback is proven to encourage employees to work hard. In fact, turnover rates are 14.9% lower in companies implementing regular feedback.
Even with these impressive numbers, there is still room for improvement in this category.
Surprisingly, more than 50% of employers don’t actively track improved performance. How can we encourage more continual feedback at work? The following tips may be of some help.
Establish a Feedback Learning Culture
It may seem only natural for a manager to comment on an employee’s work — but it isn’t as common as you might think.
According to a recent survey, only 58% of managers think they give enough feedback.
Managers should establish a culture of feedback in the workplace and give their ideas and opinions on employees’ work performances.
Failing to do so can also make employees feel disconnected, leaving them with no way to benchmark the quality of their work.
Address It Immediately
It is always a good idea to give more instant and frequent feedback rather than a single, long piece of feedback at the end of the year. Waiting an entire year for a performance review can be too long for addressing issues.
This is supported by a survey that states that about 65% of employees prefer more feedback than they’re currently receiving.
Instant, on-the-spot feedback can also save time by making your employees more efficient and productive.
Communicate to Motivate
Did you know that 39% of employees feel that their work is not appreciated?
Employees need to know they’re doing the right thing — but nearly 69% of managers feel uncomfortable communicating with employees.
With little or no acknowledgement for their work, employees tend to feel unsure about their progress. Regular feedback, on the other hand, can highly motivate employees.
Feedback on an employee’s progress does not only ensure progress in the work; it also improves employee morale.
Corrective Feedback
It’s an old question: is positive or negative feedback better?
Overall, a positive tone of voice can be encouraging and less offensive to employees, but this doesn’t mean that corrective feedback should be avoided altogether.
In fact, constructive and corrective feedback was the preferred method of feedback by 57% of employees in a recent survey. This type of feedback helps to improve skills and working methods.
Keep It Informal
Many teams prefer formal feedback meetings, complete with a selected time and place. Individual employees, on the other hand, mostly prefer on-the-spot recognition over formal reviews.
The anticipation of formal meetings can pressurize an already overwhelmed employee.
For this reason, it is often better to conduct spontaneous reviews in a friendly environment. This can help deter the added pressure and potential anxiety an employee may have to face.
Document It
Appraisals are also useful time to document your most effective processes, both those that worked most for the employees and the methods for incorporating them into other organizational functions.
This can help better devise and align effective policies in the future. It can also help highlight and eliminate strategies that did not contribute to the employees or their work processes.
Use Meeting Management Software
Effective meeting managementcan provide a platform for effective feedback mechanism.
Especially for employees at different locations, it can provide an online tool for arranging an appraisal meeting between the manager and employees.
Furthermore, employees and managers can conduct personalized discussions through the video conferencing features in an online meeting management software.
What are your thoughts on feedback exchange? Let us know in the comments below.
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Published at DZone with permission of Fred Wilson. See the original article here.
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