Feedback and The Employee Experience

Question: How important is giving feedback to your employees in shaping the employee experience?

Response: Feedback is probably the most commonly overlooked skill that new managers need that isn’t always offered in training by organizations.  How to give feedback is such a simple thing to do. It’s easy to practice. Managers can practice with a peer or with guidance from human resources. But we just don’t tell managers how to do it.

Feedback is becoming increasingly more important as we’re seeing the shift in performance management. Younger generations of employees definitely want feedback. They are not interested in the scorecard annual review that we give them every year. They want to know right now, “How am I doing? I just finished this project. How did I do?” And we just don’t train managers how to have that conversation with their employees.

If you see somebody doing something really great, right then and there just say, “Hey, in the staff meeting today when you added that comment about the X, Y, Z, it changed the whole dynamic. Thank you for saying what you did.” Giving timely and positive feedback is just going to do absolute wonders for that employee.

Of course, if someone does something that isn’t exactly right or they could do it better, a manager very quickly and privately, should let them know what was observed that wasn’t exactly right, how they could fix it, and that you, the manager, are there to support them.

Managers may be reluctant to give feedback, especially if it’s negative or corrective, because they are worried it will hurt the employee’s feelings or result in some emotional behavior they want to avoid. But they need to think of feedback as a gift—they are providing support to their employees.

Consider this simple formula for feedback: What?—pointing out what you noticed, what was great, what wasn’t so great. So what?—the impact of what you just noticed—the impact of the employee’s actions. This allows people to understand not just, “Wow, I did a great job,” but they understand why it was a great job. And then now what?—either how can this positive action be taken to the next level so great impacts can continue, or what corrective action needs to be taken. It’s such an easy formula: easy for managers to grasp and deliver, especially if corrective action is required. If managers had these types of tools and training, they’d give a lot more feedback to their staffs.

Managers should not expect to see instantaneous improvement when corrective action is needed. There are times when one small correction can change everything. But usually, it takes time, 30, 60, or 90 days until you’re able to see the difference in their performance. Nevertheless, giving somebody insights into how they could improve or what you want from them in the future will certainly pay off. People just want to do a great job.

Two of our books provide additional information about giving feedback—The Manager’s Answer Book and The Decisive Manager.  Learn more from our website, www.bigbookofhr.com.