Tips & Guidelines for Giving Effective Employee Feedback

Giving feedback to others in your workplace may seem like a tricky task, but becoming adept at offering both praise and constructive criticism doesn’t have to remain a pain point for you and your employees. Delivering constructive criticism isn’t always comfortable, but it is part of the responsibilities involved in people management, meaning it is unavoidable no matter how difficult it may seem. 

One of the key objectives for any business leader is to yield the most productivity as possible from employees, and this can only be done when those employees are receiving feedback on their work efforts in a timely and helpful manner. The problem is, many leaders today have never received the proper training necessary in giving constructive and helpful feedback, and are thus much more reluctant to deliver any sort of feedback. The key is to recognize feedback not as a negative, but rather an opportunity to provide your employees with the necessary information they need to adjust their performance and improve wherever necessary. 

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Tips for Giving Feedback 

Feedback should be designed to be constructive, not corrosive. In order to provide feedback to your employees in a constructive manner that encourages them to improve, consider the following tips and guidelines:

Use a Professional Tone 

Not all employee slip ups will keep you calm and collected, and while a team member’s carelessness or poor judgment may cause you to get upset, delivering that feedback when angry will do nothing to remedy the situation. Before giving feedback, ensure your temper is in check and that you are calm enough to deliver it in a careful and measured way. Employees are much less likely to be open to criticism if the meeting opens with blaming or shouting. 

Focus on the Facts 

While your own frustrations should be acknowledged, the point of feedback is to focus on addressing the problem itself.  

For example, if an employee is consistently missing their deadlines, rather than telling them about how you’re sick of their behaviour, spell out calmly how their actions are negatively impacting the team as a whole. 

Remain critical, but emphasize the facts with specific examples rather than your own feelings. Then, offer action-oriented suggestions to help the employee solve the issue. 

Watch Your Words 

More often than not, your employees are going to know when they have made a major mistake. When communicating about how to best address it, ensure you are not using demoralizing statements that call the employee’s intelligence or capabilities into question. They don’t need any help feeling embarrassed about their error, so the language you use when addressing it needs to be carefully thought out.  

Aim to avoid subjective statements and assessments (e.g. “You’re not showing enough passion about your work”), or sweeping generalizations (e.g. “You never contribute creatively during team brainstorming sessions”). 

Be Direct 

Ignoring or avoiding serious situations or minimizing the impact are easy outs for having difficult conversations with your employees. But, withholding constructive criticism actually harms your underperforming employees even further, since it is depriving them of the key information they could be using to improve in their work.  

When delivering negative feedback, aim to be professional and factual but still candid in what you are saying, stating the specifics in a tactful yet straightforward way. Just as you should avoid being overly harsh and demoralizing, you cannot afford to sugar-coat the harsher truths. 

Make it a Two-Way Conversation 

Feedback sessions do not have to be a lecture-style discussion of an employee’s behaviour. Regardless of the type of feedback you are giving, ensure you are receptive to what the employee has to say as well. Give them the opportunity to explain their perspective of their own actions and behaviours. 

When an employee feels comfortable to openly converse with their leader, they are much more likely to own up to shortcomings and ask for help. In addition, a two-way discussion presents the opportunity for an employee to bring your attention to any legitimate extenuating circumstances you otherwise might not have been aware of. 

Focus on Solutions 

Talking through the issue at hand is important, but the ultimate objective of giving feedback is to ensure that if an issue exists, it is rectified as swiftly as possible. 

Have possible solutions worked out for assisting the individual in their efforts to improve, and discuss them with the employee openly. Whether you need to provide them with additional training, offer more frequent check-ins on their progress and direction, or work out the kinks in a flawed system, do whatever you can to best help the employee get back on track and remedy their issue. 

Balance Criticism with Praise 

A skill any and all leaders need to have is knowing how and when to provide criticism. But this can be a slippery slope for inexperienced or untrained managers, with many running the risk of transforming into leaders who only comment when employees slip up. 

Ensure you are offering kudos for good work consistently, and recognizing both publicly and privately the accomplishments of your employees. This is an excellent way to boost their morale, reinforce positive behavior, and develop a good rapport with your team members that will make the difficult conversations easier to manage. 

At its core, employee feedback is about past behavior, delivered in the present, which has the potential to influence an employee’s future performance. Surprisingly, very little managers have actually received the proper training in giving feedback the right way, though the majority state that they want to improve in how they give feedback. 

Guidelines for Giving Feedback 

We have already discussed several key tips to delivering feedback, both positive and negative. Now, let’s have a look at some more general guidelines that you should keep in mind when planning out your feedback strategy moving forward: 

• Positive feedback can be offered in public and/or private. It is recommended however, that if planning to provide even positive feedback in public, that the employee doesn’t feel uncomfortable – know your audience.  Negative feedback, however, should only be given in private.  
• Feedback needs to be delivered in a timely manner. A best practice is to give it as close as possible to the occurrence, behavior, or issue that you intend to address. 
• Remain clear, thoughtful, and respectful regardless of the nature of the feedback or your personal sentiments about the employee. Ensure everything you say is accurate, specific, and limited only to the behavior you are intending to address and remedy. 
• Limit your feedback to areas that the employee has the ability to change. Providing feedback that is irrelevant or unchangeable will be rejected, and can be detrimental. 
• Use the word “I”, rather than “we”. Say “I observed you…”, rather than “we observed you…”. 
• Remain non-judgmental, and never personalize your feedback. Focus only on the behavior you want to address, and not on the qualities of the person you are giving feedback to. 
• Avoid “over-dumping”. Oftentimes, a receptive employee only needs one behavioral example to recognize the issue and understand where they need to improve. 
• Always identify next steps. A feedback session with no clear action plan is demoralizing, and erodes the opportunity for improvement into a discouraging lecture.  

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The Pros and Cons of Anonymous Feedback

The value of employee feedback is indisputable, and any manager will attest to it being an integral tool throughout business processes such as project management and business innovation. When it comes to understanding how employers go about collecting that feedback, however, and how they have chosen to best manage its collection and leverage its results, the advantages and drawbacks of anonymous feedback become more apparent.  

The Disadvantages of Anonymous Feedback 

Feedback is a vital part of any organization’s operations, with regular feedback results driving leadership and a company culture that remains lean, innovative, and high-performing. But the benefits of keeping feedback channels anonymous can sometimes be outweighed by the potential detriments it can have on your employees. 

The primary reasoning behind the push for anonymity is the elimination of the power dynamic that exists between the givers and receivers of harsher feedback. However, when anonymity is introduced and becomes the norm for feedback giving, the providers of that harsher feedback are usually much less specific, since details may risk them revealing their identity. The absence of context when it comes to providing feedback can undermine a company’s push for innovation and growth, since it discourages learning, openness, courage, and adaptability.  

Listed below are some other possible drawbacks of implementing an anonymous feedback system. 

1. Encouraging Dismissive Rationalization 

Even the most impartial and selfless candidate is not immune to thinking about their self-image when it comes to constructive criticism. It is extremely common for harsher criticisms to be minimized almost intuitively by their receiver. 

For example, if the source of feedback is someone you don’t think highly of, you may inherently minimize whatever it is they present to you. However, in these cases you can recognize rationalization and work past it to digest the truth. When the feedback is anonymous, it is much harder to develop that counter-narrative to dispute the instinct to dismiss whatever is being said. In order to increase congruence with how we perceive ourselves, we leverage the lack of context that comes from anonymous feedback to discount it entirely, and no learning can be done. 

2. Promoting Mistrust 

When constructive feedback is received anonymously, it is not uncommon for it to be met with disbelief and a questioning of the motive behind it. Without a clear sense of the source, employees and employers alike may jump to conclusions about why the feedback is constructive in the first place, including beliefs that may lead to mistrust among the workplace like the perception of intentional sabotage. Even when the constructive feedback is minor, its anonymity can still have the receiver thinking more about the source and why it couldn’t be shared in person, resulting in a gradual decrease in openness and trust. 

3. Delusions of Grandeur 

Just like critical anonymous feedback can be treated too trivially, positive anonymous feedback can be treated with too much significance. When someone receives positive feedback or praise, they are likely to elevate it as an accurate definition of who they are, telling themselves it is entirely correct. When this happens, the opportunity to adapt and grow further is lost, since the receiver of the feedback thinks they have reached their highest potential. 

4. Decreasing Moments of Encouragement 

Not only does positive anonymous feedback rob the receiver of a valuable learning opportunity, it also steals the chances for meaningful moments between colleagues to occur where they can openly encourage one another and have positive interactions. Dialogue amongst team members, as well as between an employer and employee, about their respective strengths can have tremendous effects for the organization. Anonymous feedback removes that opportunity, blocking off the channel towards success that is supportive relationships. 

The Benefits of Anonymous Feedback 

While anonymous feedback may not be the best fit for some organizations, it does not mean it is all bad, or only has negative results for business. In some cases, implementing anonymous feedback may be the best option when it comes to internal assessments. 

One of the largest arguments when it comes to the advantages of having anonymous feedback in place, is its potential to eliminate the internal struggles employees and employers undergo when they are forced to analyze and comment on someone’s actions. Feedback should be mutually beneficial for the receiver and the provider, but it has negative connotations for several different reasons, including: 

• The fear of being judged. The need to be liked is not exclusive to team members’ personal lives. People want to be liked and appreciated in their workplace, and especially by their supervisor since they hold ultimate power over their career and financial security. When feedback is not anonymous, people who hold high expectations for themselves and who worry about how their supervisor will perceive them can struggle significantly in overcoming that mental block and speaking their mind about certain issues. 
• The fear of losing your job. Similarly, an employee shying away from face-to-face feedback can be considered a form of self-preservation. By abstaining from sharing something that may be perceived as wrong to someone in a position of authority, they believe they are protecting themselves from a potential blow to their career or a suspension altogether. Although it is extremely unlikely for an employee to actually be fired over constructive feedback they provide to their superiors, people still register it as a risk, and play it safe rather than contributing in such a way that may harm their financial security.  
• The fear of being ridiculed. While some employees may worry about face-to-face feedback in the context of being disliked or fired for what they say, others simply worry that the feedback they want to provide will fall short of expectations. Just like the fear of being judged, the fear of being ridiculed is hard-wired into everyone. Social rejection is scary, with employees taking great care in how they choose their words so as not to be rejected by the people around them. This includes withholding potentially valuable constructive feedback. 

These mental barriers can seriously hinder the value a company can yield from their feedback process. When the providers of feedback are in the face of distinct mental obstacles, some of which are near impossible to eliminate, the results are inherently inferior than if the providers had said what was truly on their minds. Anonymous feedback provides employees the freedom to criticize and express their opinions without having to face those mental blocks, getting at the truth of their sentiments. And, when truth is at the forefront of feedback, managers can leverage that information to genuinely improve their workplace and drive better performance.  

Listed below are the key advantages that come from implementing anonymous feedback into your workplace. 

1. Employees Expressing Themselves Freely and Providing Valuable Insights 

If an employee can say what they truly mean and provide honest and constructive feedback without the fear of being judged, ridiculed, or labelled, they have no reason to not contribute to the improvement of their team or project. When non-anonymous feedback is the only feedback form available, only the superficial and non-threatening issues that affect the workplace will be mentioned, leaving the most important, underlying, and potentially uglier problems left unsolved. 

Feedback exists to improve the overall quality of a company in order to keep driving it forward. If the more controversial, important issues are not addressed as soon as possible, a company risks cultivating an unhappy workspace riddled with conflict and a lack of productivity. Anonymous feedback is the perfect channel to reign control over those key issues, since the person who brought it to your attention is no longer the focus, but its resolution is. That honest insight is a valuable asset for any leader. 

2. Building Trust 

Anonymous feedback has the potential to empower both employees and employers alike. While the potential risks that this emboldening could have should be considered, the subject pool is not necessarily one that is privy to rampant dishonesty or bias. At the end of the day, they are your team, a group of mature and responsible employees who can, and should be able to, express their opinions on the business freely. 

We have already discussed the risk that anonymous feedback has in promoting mistrust, but when leveraged correctly, it can actually have the opposite effect. Employees may perceive a forced non-anonymity as a lack of trust the employer holds in them, which will only secure those aforementioned mental blocks as opposed to eliminating them. Anonymous feedback channels can demonstrate to them that you trust them not to abuse the opportunity, and to provide feedback that is genuinely constructive, helpful, and as unbiased as possible.  

Anonymous Feedback: A Yes or No? 

The value of feedback is indisputable, but the implementation of anonymous feedback is highly debated amongst HR professionals. However, while it can potentially pose several risks for the effectiveness of the process itself, anonymous feedback is more often than not a key feature that is valued by the majority of companies. 

The data an organization can receive from anonymous feedback, versus non-anonymous, is significantly more beneficial. Real issues rarely come up consistently in non-anonymous feedback reports, but in anonymous feedback reports, managers receive genuine, constructive insights that they can use to improve the overall work experience of their team. When feedback is kept anonymous, employees are much more inclined to be truthful in their reporting, sharing valuable information and providing actionable observations and suggestions. 

There are several different ways to incorporate anonymous feedback into your organization’s assessment process, with SpriggHR seamlessly integrating optional anonymity into its Continuous & 360 Degree Feedback Tool.

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The 6 Stages of the Employee Life Cycle

Designing and encouraging an employee experience that leads to longevity, success, and great employee engagement should be a permanent mindset within your company. Rather than looking at employee engagement efforts as one-time endeavors when morale is low, the employee life cycle model frames engagement as a designed experience embedded into the trajectory of every employee within your organization.  

What is the Employee Life Cycle Model? 

The employee life cycle model (ELC) is an organizational method used to visualize how an employee engages with the company they are a part of. There are six stages involved in this model: Attraction, Recruitment, Onboarding, Development, Retention, and Separation.  

The employee life cycle model is geared to encompass every stage of an employee’s experience within a company, formatting that trajectory into a framework that provides a different engagement strategy for each stage the employee enters. For example, if a company has an excellent and engaging recruitment strategy, but high turnover rates, they can focus on the retention stage in their ELC in order to develop a suitable solution for the issue.  

The employee life cycle model greatly resembles the typical customer journey, which is intentional! Essentially, designing an employee life cycle strategy is rooted in the idea that the employee experience is just as valuable as their customer’s experience. Many large organizations don’t have a true idea of the value of employee engagement, choosing instead to focus on customer satisfaction and viewing employee engagement efforts as temporary programs rather than a consistent corporate mindset. In order for your company to be able to capitalize on your workforce’s talent, you need to be able to turn engagement data into meaningful intelligence at all managerial levels, helping your employees recognize their contributions to the company and driving engagement and success.  

The Advantages of Implementing an Employee Life Cycle Strategy 

By mapping out the employee journey in the same way you map out the customer experience, your company will see two main benefits: better talent retention, and reputation improvement. The ability to effectively allocate resources and efforts to reduce turnover issues reduces the time and money that turnover costs cause for the company. Similarly, a better reputation increases the chances of hiring more new talent, meaning a more committed and driven workforce.  

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The 6 Employee Life Cycle Stages 

In order to understand exactly how each stage of the employee life cycle can drive employee engagement, let’s examine each stage in greater detail. 

1. Attraction 

The first stage of the employee life cycle is the employee attraction stage. Regardless of how innovative and strong your product or service is, without the attraction and retention of great talent, your company will fail. This makes the attraction stage one of the most crucial aspects to any organization’s growth strategy.  

The attraction stage is the only stage that occurs before you have an open position in the company. Also referred to as the employer brand, it is the projection of the image of your organization as a great place to work, both in the minds of current employees as well as key stakeholders in the external market. This means that active and passive talent candidates, clients, customers, and potential stakeholders have a positive perspective of how it is to work within your company.  

In order to build a great employer brand and succeed in the employee attraction stage, there are several key tips you can follow: 

• Raise Brand awareness. Have your managers attend seminars and conferences regularly, seek out speaking opportunities, and be a regular contributor or sponsor of popular industry magazines, websites, and blogs. This will help build up your profile within the industry as a great place to work. 
• Be known to have a great culture. Regardless of external marketing tactics, the employee remains the most valuable and convincing promoter for any company. By having a fantastic company culture, you only increase the chances that your existing employees will regularly tell others about how great it is to work within your organization. You can also amplify these efforts by sharing insights into your culture publicly using company social media accounts.  
• Offer attractive benefits and compensation. Being competitive with compensation is one of the most obvious efforts your company can make to appeal to the top talent in your industry. This does not mean you need to pay the most to attract the best, but you should never pay the least. Seek out opportunities to provide softer benefits in addition to your existing ones, such as team lunches, birthdays off, and so on.  

2. Recruitment 

The second stage of the employee life cycle is the employee recruitment stage, the period where you seek out and recruit the best talent to join your organization. Recruitment can occur as a result of an existing role becoming vacant, or a new position being created altogether. The best types of recruitment plans offer an optimal candidate experience, support collaborative hiring centered around clear criteria and processes, and provide meaningful data that can be used to improve hiring results over time.  

In order to succeed in recruiting the right talent for your team, here are several key tips to include in your recruitment stage: 

• Ask for referrals from your existing team. Perhaps one of the best recruitment strategies out there is a referral from one of your own employees. As active members of the industry, they likely know several people who could be a perfect fit for the role you are trying to fill. However, be careful not to hire close friends or family of existing team members, as this can make the dynamic more challenging. Typically, these referrals will share a similar value set also. 
• Try out various recruitment platforms. Sticking to only one major recruitment website or media severely limits your candidate pool. Ask yourself where it is that your ideal candidates frequent their visits. This could be an industry meetup, or a lesser-known but growing industry magazine that many new potential industry leaders are subscribed to.  
• Be specific in who and what you are looking for. A sure-fire way to limit the chances of recruiting the most suitable candidates for a role is to publish vague employment advertisements. While being broad can be useful in casting a wider net, you should still be careful to outline all the pre-requisites to save you and the candidate’s time in applying and assessing.  
• Involve your employees. In addition to encouraging them to refer potential candidates, you can also ask your existing employees to help determine the best requirements for the role. Your team members can even assist you in reviewing the resumes and qualifications of potential candidates, if you see appropriate. Another useful way you can involve your employees is to request that someone in a very similar role joins in on the interview process, in order to assess the candidates that best fit within the team.  

3. Onboarding 

The next stage of the employee life cycle model is the employee onboarding stage. Occurring after you have recruited the top talent, the onboarding period is critical to getting your new hires well-adjusted to the organizational environment and performance aspects of their new job as quickly and smoothly as possible. During the onboarding stage, new employees cover more in-depth aspects of their position, identify the attitudes, knowledge, skills, and behaviors that are required to function effectively within the organization.  

Making new hires feel welcomed in the team and well-acclimatized to the nature of both their role and the organization is critical to drawing out long-term contributions and engagement.  Here are some key strategies you can employ to ensure that the onboarding stage of your company’s employee life cycle run smoothly for all concerned: 

• Have a job description. It does not have to be a long and academic analysis of the demands of the job but aim to have a single page outline that lists the most important duties of the role, as well as any associated experience and skills. 
• Discuss the company’s vision and values. Laying out your company values and vision and discussing what they all mean with your new hire is a vital component of any onboarding process. Clarify any questions they may have and get a sense of what the values mean to them, ensuring their perspective aligns with success.  
• Outline your expectations clearly. The job description will carry some of the detail, but it is still critical to lead each new hire through the expectations you are asking from them, along with explaining why they are important to company success.  
• Do follow-ups regularly. Completing the first week’s induction stage and then leaving the new hire to fend for themselves is bound to result in a rapid decline in employee performance. Schedule face to face meetings with each new employee after a few weeks, checking in on how they are managing, what challenges they may have found integrating with the team, and so on. 

4. Development 

The following stage of the employee life cycle model is the employee development stage. It is during this period that you begin to consistently encourage professional development amongst your team, which acts as a catalyst in their skill development, and also helps provide them with a future career path within the company. 

Some key tips you can follow to improve the professional development stage of your employee life cycle model include: 

• Encourage external learning. Providing your team members with opportunities to attend relevant conferences and seminar yields tremendous benefits for their skill development (many are available as virtual offerings online). A good way to do this is to regularly send them at the company cost or offer all employees a company-covered budget for their own initiated event attendance. 
• Assess knowledge and skills together. In order to best identify an employee’s key skills and areas of expertise, managers should work with the employee directly. Leveraging their own insight into their performance, you can then plan out and prioritize the areas that require further development. This is also one of the best ways to establish an open, honest feedback-driven relationship between you and your employees.  
• Encourage your team members to be responsible for their own development. In order to ensure employees, remain focused, you should encourage them to each develop a professional action plan. This plan should set out to help them develop their abilities and increase their chances of career advancement. You can either collaborate with them on this process or provide a general template to the whole team that they can follow to complete their own simple plan.  
• Reward the employees who learn in their own time. Many of your team members likely take part in regular informal development outside of their normal work hours. When you hear of a staff member doing this, make a point of finding out more about it, and sincerely thank them for their efforts and ensure they know they are appreciated.  

5. Retention 

The fifth stage of the lifecycle model is the employee retention stage. It is here that you focus your energies on keeping your top employees, and ensuring they are happy and sufficiently challenged in their respective roles within the team. The influence of company culture goes a long way in this stage. If the culture in your organization is poor, it inevitably leads to a high employee turnover rate, meaning you will have to face replacement costs regularly. Improving the retention stage is a great way to counteract this risk and promote longevity and satisfaction amongst your team’s career paths.  

Some tips to help ensure you are retaining your key people, and improving the employee retention stage of your lifecycle model, include: 

• Hire the right people. In order to retain the top talent, you need to first attract and recruit the top talent. This is where the success of your attraction and retention stages can be measured – if you were careful in your process and approach of who you hired to begin with, then you will stand a better chance of keeping the right employees in your team. 
• Cultivate great relationships with your team members. Building and fostering an open, honest, and respectful relationship with everyone on your team is critical to keeping them motivated to stay with your company. 
• Openly communicate your organizational mission and team aspirations. In order to improve your employee retention rate, you first need to ensure that your team thoroughly understands and is committed to the same mission and direction as the company. You should be regularly communicating with them on where they belong within the company, and how their specific roles and accomplishments help the organization to execute its mission. 
• Seek out employee feedback and measure team morale frequently. For smaller companies, a weekly face to face meeting with the team can be useful, where you set out to discuss how the team is progressing and identify any problems or issues they are facing. Another useful tool can be employee pulse surveys. If you want to regularly measure team morale, and seek out constant effective feedback, utilizing shorter employee survey tools or implementing an online feedback mechanism such as Sprigg’s Continuous & 360 Degree Feedback tool can be particularly useful.  
• Understand what motivates your employees. No one employee is the exact same, and in turn, no one thing will motivate every single employee to work hard. Understanding what drives and motivates various team members means that you can engage your employees and ideally retain them. 

6. Separation 

The final stage of the employee life cycle is the employee separation stage. For most employees, there comes a point where their employment lifecycle will reach its conclusion, whether from retirement, new employment, or for personal reasons. Treating the separation process with equal importance as the onboarding process and being equally as strategic in how you approach this stage, is critical. When a team member leaves, it has an effect on other members. 

It is the responsibility of the manager and HR professionals within the company to ensure that the employee who is leaving, exits in a way that doesn’t cause major disruption. If you find yourself faced with a situation where a key employee separates from your organization unexpectedly, there are a few key tips you can use to minimize the effects of that disruption: 

• Understand the reasoning behind the resignation. What an employee states as their reason for resignation, and what the actual reasons are, are often not the same. Aim to dig deep at what truly caused the separation, so you can avoid the circumstances that led to it in the future. 
• Remain positive.  You will feel a sense of loss at a top performer leaving your team but it does not mean that you will never find another great employee to replace them. 
• Ask for honest feedback. When someone leaves a company, conduct an exit-interview as it is one of the greatest opportunities to glean honest feedback about what it’s truly like to work in the organization.  
• Remind the team to keep looking ahead. Oftentimes, the loss of a valued employee can cause a decrease in overall team morale. Aim to concentrate of reaffirming commitment to the remaining team members, reminding them that while their departure is disappointing, the team will ultimately recover and grow as a result of it.  

In Summary 

The employee life cycle model is one of the best was to visualize and plan for each stage of an employee’s interactions with your company, providing you with the insight necessary to make each stage of their time with your company as successful as possible. By focusing on doing the best you can at each stage, you are much more likely to attract and retain a fantastic team.  

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The 3 Rules of Continuous Feedback

 

The Importance of Continuous Feedback

Workplace dynamics and expectations are constantly evolving over time, and so too should your approach to managing employees. With the increased prevalence of Millennials (typically born 1981 to 1996) in the workplace, a notable shift in core values is evident. One of Millennials’ major expectations is to receive regular, continuous feedback.

But don't take our word for it...

99% believe feedback is important

According to a study by PWC, Millennials...

“...welcome and expect detailed, regular feedback and praise for a job well done - 51% of those questioned said feedback should be given very frequently or continually on the job and only 1% said feedback was not important to them.”

Feedback is important to essentially all employees, and at least half specifically stated that they desire continuous feedback.

85% want more frequent performance conversations

More alarmingly, according to a study by Trinet...

“...69 percent of Millennials, see their company’s review process as flawed…”

But...

“they also depend on it for their professional growth and development.”

Their data strongly vouches for continuous feedback, stating that...

“...85 percent would feel more confident in their current position if they could have more frequent performance conversations with their manager.”

Continuous feedback was among the top updates that surveyed employees wished to see added to their performance review process.

If you’re looking to normalize continuous feedback in your company’s performance management practices, it’s the right move. Take a look at these three rules to keep regular feedback manageable and effective for your business.

Rule 1. Do away with linear thinking.

Historically, when feedback did exist in the workplace, it flowed in one direction. Managers told their employees what their goals were, and those employees either met them or they didn’t. In contrast, continuous feedback works best as an ongoing conversation between the manager and their team – and some of that feedback flows upwards to reflect on the manager’s own performance or workflow prioritization.

Going back to Trinet’s study, a number of employees indicated support for...

“An open dialogue, given that 32 percent dislike when reviews don’t allow employees to share thoughts on their own performance.”

The nature of continuous feedback itself is also non-linear. Instead of a goal’s “finish line,” continuous feedback is a cyclical process, where together, employees and their managers keep establishing new baselines of performance. It allows for employees to continuously improve, while adjusting for all kinds of variables that could be impacting their work.

Rule 2: Keep the annual review.

While it’s easy to fall into a false equivalency trap that annual performance reviews can be replaced by continuous feedback, it’s better to think of check-in meetings as improving on the annual review.

By being timely with feedback, managers can course-correct an employee who’s in danger of losing their way, or give instant kudos to someone who really deserves it. Plus, a bank of ongoing feedback means that come annual review time, that meeting becomes a discussion on where to go, as both manager and staff members are already on the same page regarding how they’ve performed over the year.

Another major issue that employees surveyed by Trinet had with their current performance review process…

“40 percent feel their current feedback is too vague.”

By practicing continuous feedback and having a record of ongoing conversations, it becomes much easier for managers to provide more specific feedback, which is mutually beneficial to both employees and their manager.

Rule 3: Use technology to help.

The move towards continuous feedback in the office is being driven by Millennial workers who demand high engagement from their employers. Meet them where they are with technological solutions that enable feedback to come in frequently, on the digital platforms they’re accustomed to, including mobile devices.

If you expect resistance to a tech-focused move from older generations in the office, explain the myriad benefits of participating, from improved performance to the ability to track those improvements, resulting in better performance and more accurate compensation.

You can also remind managers that technology enables continuous feedback and thereby helps to eliminate the negative consequences associated with holding just one annual performance review. What negative consequences you ask? Trinet's study showed that Millennials have reacted to an annual performance review by...

• 28% looking for a new job
• 15% cursing or crying
• 22% were so anxious about the review they called in sick.

 

Continuous Feedback in Practice

At SpriggHR, we believe that continuous feedback is a crucial part of optimizing employee performance and overall workplace productivity.

For this reason, continuous feedback is one of our six core solutions.

SpriggHR software allows both managers and employees to give, receive and request feedback at any time! Users are able to engage in ongoing performance conversations that can include individuals or entire teams. Users may opt to attach a file to their feedback, customize who will be able to view the feedback, send a copy to their HR representative, and even submit feedback anonymously!

This feature facilitates and encourages the practice of continuous feedback. When performance management is a conversation and everyone has an active voice, the result is a cohesive team and an organization that is always on the same page.

Continuous feedback promotes a more engaged workforce and better relationships between managers and direct reports, so why not start?

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7 Ways to Have Effective 1-on-1 Meetings with Your Employees

 

1-on-1 Meetings Drive Results and Team Success

Here are some handy tips to pass on to your people managers to encourage regular 1-on-1 meetings and how to make them more effective.

Gone are the days where a single, annual performance review was the only 1-on-1 meeting between a manager and employee about their professional progress. As studies show, there is little value, beyond an administrative exercise to the single review approach.. That is not to say that the formal annual review should be done away with, but the more opportunities you can create to discuss performance, the better for your company. You can think of these additional meetings as check-ins as opposed to the all-encompassing annual review.

So, if you want to work toward driving an optimal feedback culture within your organization, here are seven tips to help you implement check-in meetings with impact!

 

1. Define the purpose of your 1-on-1 meetings.

What is it that you hope to accomplish with these check-in meetings? You should have a clear purpose in mind when conducting these meetings, so that both you and your employees can feel that time is being put to good use. Some things you can hope to accomplish, and their benefits are;

• Building rapport with employees from one check-in to the next fosters open dialogue and increases the potential for engagement.
• Ensuring that you and your employees are on the same page in a day- to- day context will facilitate effective long-term alignment to organizational objectives. No one will feel left in the dark!
• Making your employees aware that their opinion is valued will encourage them to feel comfortable enough to come forward with potential issues so that they can be addressed before they have a chance to escalate.
• Becoming aware of individual employee aspirations will help assist each employee in ways specific to their personal career development objectives. Everyone is different, which makes 1-on-1 meetings a perfect time to talk about personal career goals.

To summarize, building an on-going rapport, ensuring that everyone is on the same page, making employees feel that their opinion is valued, and learning the career goals of individuals are all great potential outcomes of performing regular 1-on-1 meeting.

2. Schedule 1-on-1 meetings often.

Make it a priority to have regular meetings with your staff in between more formal performance reviews. Try setting up something like “every second Thursday” or “the first Wednesday of the month” for each employee and stick to it.

It’s easy to push back a check-in meeting in favor of something that seems more time sensitive, but this should be avoided as much as possible. These check-in meetings should be treated with importance, because they ARE important!

3. Set an attainable goal for each 1-on-1 meeting.

Well before you head into a check-in meeting, ensure that it has a purpose. Set a feasible goal that you’d like to accomplish by the end of your discussion.

For example, knowing in advance that you need to “see why Bob’s struggled to meet his last three deadlines” or “share the great feedback Sue’s project received from our big client” will guarantee that you’re using your time – and your employee’s time – wisely.

These goals don’t have to be enormous accolades and can be as simple as having a brief discussion about a pre-determed topic. Setting a goal and achieving it will help to reinforce the structure and importance of future check-in meetings and will leave your employees feeling satisfied and engaged.

4. Prepare questions ahead of time.

Formulate some questions that align with your goal for the meeting. To extend the above example, you might ask Bob about barriers to finishing his work on time and how you can help. Do take caution to tread lightly around potentially sensitive or personal issues. .

If you’re struggling with how to ask your questions, SpriggHR’s Check-In Meeting question bank is a great place to get started. 

Employee Check-In Meeting Questions (Employee asks to Leader)

What's one thing I do well that I should continue doing?

What's one thing that I could do differently, or start doing that would make me even more effective?

Leader Check-In Meeting Questions (Leader asks to Employee)

What is somerthing you want to highlight? Progress towards a goal, accomplishment, or learning?

What might be one area for coaching, learning or development?

What's one thing I'm doing to support you that's working?

What's one way that I could work better for you?

5. Make 1-on-1 meetings a two-way conversation.

While it’s great to be ready for your meeting with a goal and some questions, give your employees the leeway to direct some of the meeting, too. Cultivate a safe atmosphere for them to share their own questions and concerns about how their work is going, as well as the opportunity to trumpet their successes.

Ask your employee what YOU can improve on to help them achieve their goals and maximize their performance. Cultivatating a safe environment is crucial, as your employee must feel that they are able to address issues and concerns with you.

 

6. Capture highlights of your discussion.

You or your employee can notes on the key points of what was discussed and agreed during the check-in meeting. This documentation is essential in measuring progress, recaping next steps and supporting achievements

SpriggHR allows you to document all of your check-in meeting notes and keep them with the employee’s file. This feature comes in handy when it comes time for more in depth performance conversations, such as the annual performance review. Having these notes can help both yourself and your employee be properly prepared for the annual review and make sure that there are no major surprises for either party!

 

7. Always end on a positive note.

It’s unrealistic to think that every 1-on-1 meeting will be purely positive. There will inevitably be times when employees are not meeting expectations, and corrective measures will need to be discussed. There will also be times when an employee is displeased by what you tell them
regarding their performance.

Even if your check-in meeting takes a negative turn, you always have the power to end things on a positive note. Perhaps you informed an employee that things need to change, and they reacted with resistance, reluctance or appeared stressed. Inform your employee that you’re on
the same team as them, and you’re there to help them achieve their goals. Reassure them that it’s okay to seek assistance when they need it. The last thing that you want is for your employees to dread their next 1-on-1 meeting!

By always ending on a good note, you can help to reinforce the idea that these meetings are
intended to provide guidance and direction, not criticism.

 

Final Thoughts

Checking in with your staff means checking in with what fuels your company’s success, so arm yourself with these tips, and try it at your next 1-on-1!

Here at SpriggHR, 1-on-1 meetings are a cornerstone to employee engagement and achieving goals. It is for that reason that they are offered as one of our core solutions!

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Request a Free Demo

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The post 7 Ways to Have Effective 1-on-1 Meetings with Your Employees appeared first on SpriggHR.