Honest, frequent, two-way feedback between managers and their teams can be a daunting task. But it’s essential to build a healthy, resilient, productive workplace culture.
Feedback forces us to focus on our strengths and weaknesses, and how our behaviours and actions impact those around us and company success.
Yet, most businesses don’t use an effective feedback cycle, if at all. Feedback doesn’t happen often enough. It’s usually untimely and often overly negative.
Constructive and positive feedback are crucial. Positive feedback boosts morale and reinforces the decisive and appropriate behaviours that lead to good performance. Constructive feedback helps people learn and grow.
Perform & Engage 365 creates positive feedback behaviours for your people. Our process uses regular, light-touch check-ins to encourage journal style updates that are proven to boost engagement and productivity.
Types of feedback
One-way feedback
This type of feedback tends to be instructional rather than a discussion. This is good for simple rounds of feedback where a discussion isn't required. If this is used too often in place of two-way feedback, employee engagement could diminish and lead to performance issues.
Two-way feedback
Two-way feedback is a conversation. It encourages two people to talk through a concern or challenge or celebrate a success. This is most productive when used during 1:1 meetings, performance reviews and appraisals, or during weekly check-ins.
Anonymous feedback
Typically associated with Gallup Q12 or ad hoc engagement surveys. Anonymous feedback tends to be easier to dismiss because there's no accountability for the person giving or receiving it. It can also lead to wasted time and resources by implementing new company-wide initiatives without due diligence.
We recommend steering away from that unless your people lack confidence to be honest - although that's a red flag in itself for your company culture. If you can have an honest conversation without anonymity, then there are much greater avenues for further discussion.
Transparent feedback
To encourage honest feedback with any degree of reliability, you’ve got to create a sense of trust and safety around your feedback process. Trust and transparency need to be lead from the front - from CEO to intern.
The Perform & Engage 365 check-in encourages regular, transparent feedback between managers and their employees.
Regular feedback
Feedback is most effective when it's delivered as soon as something has happened. In fact, it's been argued that feedback should be given no later than 72 hours after the event that incited it. But while checking in with all your employees every three days may be a bit much, building feedback into your workplace’s weekly routine means you can respond to issues as they arise.
Ad hoc feedback
Ad hoc feedback works best for projects or when you need to give feedback that falls outside your regular feedback cycle.
If all you do is just review your employees at the end of the year, you’ll either be trying to correct mistakes so old they’ve been forgotten, or your attention will be disproportionately focused on the months or weeks leading up to the evaluation.
💡 Top tip: See how to send and request ad hoc feedback in Perform & Engage 365 here.
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