How to make employee feedback more effective

How feedback can improve employee wellbeing and productivity

Feedback is crucial to employee satisfaction for a myriad of reasons.

Fundamentally, employee feedback allows employees to get a gauge of how their actions and performances are perceived by other workers, and this information can be used to identify areas of improvement, set goals and develop strategies for achieving them. In essence, workers want to know what they’re getting right and where they can improve. Feeding back helps employees get to know the goals and objectives of the people they’re working with and how they can successfully team up to reach those goals together. 

What effective employee feedback can achieve in the workplace

1. Build trust – if the employee feels like they’re part of an open honest conversation, they feel more camaraderie with their team.
2. Make employees feel purposeful – when employees are made aware of how their work plays a part – their square on the patchwork quilt – of the company’s success, they’re more likely to feel connected to and integral to the company’s growth. This in turn bolsters motivation at work
3. Boost performance – personal and professional. As well as assisting in developing the company and growing it toward its aims, feedback can help the personal development and wellbeing of employees. 

How to give feedback to employees that will be more effective

• Remember to take your employees with you – when workers feel that their voices are heard and their experience within the company, understanding of its processes and objectives are taken on board, they feel camaraderie with the team. 
• Tailor your feedback delivery to suit your team – younger employees who’ve had a pandemic-induced remote beginning to their careers, are particularly lacking in one-to-one feedback and will crave that perhaps more than older, experienced colleagues.
• Be consistent and constant in your feedback – While it can seem business critical to explain what’s gone wrong when an employee’s made a mistake, the most effective way for this messaging to be absorbed is for the employee to be in the habit of hearing useful information from you – like feedback as to what they’re actually doing right.  If feedback is delivered in an always-on regular format, it can provide a space for both positive and negative commentary to be made. Employees can vent their frustrations before they harden into resentments and to provide companies with a better understanding of how to improve employees’ job satisfaction. 
• Look forward for learnings, not backward for failings:  while it’s useful to take stock of past mistakes to shore up improvements for the future, dwelling on these issues can be counterproductive from all sides: push forward with learnings from mistakes, rather than resentments for those who may have made them.