Accurate and honest employee feedback is essential for many reasons. Through clear employee feedback, teams work more effectively. Honest feedback provides employers with a clear idea of where employees are in the engagement spectrum.
But, getting effective, clear feedback can be difficult. There are three steps to better employee feedback
1. Ask For It Regularly
Employee feedback given regularly provides a more consistent temperature of employee engagement and frustration. It’s a lot easier to tell if a problem is ongoing when feedback continues to point to an issue than if feedback only comes annually.
Likewise, employers can gauge employee engagement a lot better when feedback is regular. Some employers send out a weekly survey for employees and can more rapidly address concerns and issues that arise. Surveys should ask only 1 or 2 questions and be multiple choice. This allows employees to answer them without getting bogged down quickly.
Managers and HR, or other administrators, can then get an overall pulse on the satisfaction and engagement of their employees. They can track responses and see correlations to seasonality, significant events, and other influences on employee engagement.
But, even if you do a survey weekly, don’t neglect to schedule a debriefing meeting for teams after a major project wraps up. Debriefing meetings allow employees and teams to discuss the successes and challenges of a project. It provides a method and means for discussion around how processes can be improved and an avenue for employees to express frustration and be part of the solution to those issues.
Employees who didn’t feel supported can ask for more support during future projects.
Debriefing can greatly impact the success and ease of future projects, but it also helps to engage employees in the overall process. Participating in a post-project meeting helps to raise the level of engagement for employees. And, as employees brainstorm how issues could have been smoothed out, they are given a higher level of autonomy, which also raises engagement.
Lastly, holding a post-meeting around a project also provides an avenue for employees to celebrate a successful completion and provide valuable peer recognition for the challenges they overcame as a team.
The power of debriefing after project completion cannot be overstated.
2. Teach Employees To Provide Clear, Specific Feedback
Employee feedback is most effective when it’s clear and specific. Employee feedback that is general and vague does little more than no employee feedback. Teach employees to provide clear feedback and a space for them to be honest without adverse consequences or future censoring.
Too often, employees are fearful about giving honest feedback because they believe that it will negatively affect them in the future. Make sure to provide a way for employees to either provide anonymous feedback or adjust policies and behaviors so that employees don’t fear retribution after honest negative feedback.
But, just because you want employees to give honest feedback doesn’t mean that it gives them a license for belittling or incessant complaining. Train employees on how to provide effective feedback. Teach them to provide input with diplomatic care. This involves three main components.
Employees should provide specific feedback. They should provide examples in their feedback. Consider the difference in these two types of feedback;
“You don’t care about my opinions” versus “Yesterday during the meeting, I started giving an idea, and you interrupted me with your idea. That made me feel like you don’t value my opinions.”
When providing specific feedback, employees should be tactful and considerate of the other person’s feelings. That doesn’t mean they have to sugarcoat their feedback, but it does mean that they provide feedback without belittling, stereotyping, or rudeness. Employees who assume their colleagues’ best intentions are better able to provide effective feedback without assuming personal offense was intended.
- Clear, specific feedback
- Examples
- Consideration for the other person’s feelings
This works well with positive feedback as well. Team members who give specific feedback with examples to recognize a colleague will have a more significant impact on that person than if they provide generic feedback.
3. Eliminate Natural Biases
Your employees may be giving feedback, and you don’t realize it because of natural biases. According to the University of Texas, Austin, natural biases are one of the biggest reasons employees don’t give feedback (or are not credited with giving feedback).
It’s not that they don’t speak up. It’s just that natural biases filter out their feedback so that managers honestly don’t realize feedback has been given. This perpetuates a drop in future feedback and widens the communication gap.
Let’s take a deeper look.
Researches at the University of Texas, Austin, found that managers often had selective hearing without realizing it. Natural biases influence managers and staff to put greater weight on certain employees’ opinions than others.
In the study, long-term employees had more voice than newer employees. Employees were credited less with having fewer ideas, even when new employees spoke up more. Full-time employees are listened to more than part-timers.
And, race, gender, and age can also impact how much an employee is heard. In the study, workplaces listened to minorities less than the predominant race or gender. If women occupied the bulk of the management positions and represented the majority gender at an employer, then men were credited with were ideas and listened to less than their women colleagues.
Another type of bias often found is a cognitive bias. Cognitive bias makes us hear the opinions and facts that support our point of view. This further widens the gap between what employees are saying and what managers are hearing.
There are several ways that managers can adjust for natural biases. Anonymous surveys and suggestions can help to provide employee feedback. Another option, advocated by the University of Texas, Austin, is to add a second person to the feedback process. One person gathers the ideas and submits them to a second person who evaluates the merit of the ideas.
As managers become more aware of their natural biases and pause to listen to ideas given by each member of their staff, employee feedback will become more effective and increase.
Conclusion
Fortunately, improving employee feedback doesn’t have to be complicated or difficult. And it can have a profound impact on employee job satisfaction and motivation. You might also enjoy Employee Engagement Isn’t Just About Recognition: Traversing Failure or 10 Steps to a Successful Mentoring Program.
About Thanks
Thanks is a leading provider of a recognition-based platform that increases communication, builds teamwork, and makes recognition a part of company culture. Fast, easy and simple Thanks makes it easy to bring data-driven employee recognition to your entire organization. O.C. Tanner purchased the Thanks platform in 2019 to fulfill the recognition needs of smaller businesses.
Thanks customers benefit from the same decades of research in employee motivation and company culture that O.C. Tanner enterprise clients enjoy, but in a product that is geared for fast, easy and simple deployment. Whether you’re starting a recognition program or improving and expanding on what you already have, Thanks has everything you need to engage your people with effective, scalable recognition.