Ninety-eight percent of employees will fail to be engaged when managers provide little to no feedback. Ninety-eight percent! And 65% of employees claim that they want to receive more feedback at work.1 However, a lot of employers and learning and development professionals don’t know where to start when providing valuable feedback.
Here are five tips and practices for giving employees valuable feedback.
1. Remain Positive and Calm
When providing feedback, always stay positive and calm. If you’re condescending, frustrated, or agitated when you provide feedback to your employees, they’ll be a lot less likely to listen to you and respect what you’re saying. Try to provide a positive example of something that is going well before you offer criticism and opportunities for improvement so they’re less likely to think things like, “Goodness. I can’t do anything right here.”
2. Make Sure You Have Their Undivided Attention in a Private Setting
When offering employees feedback in person, always talk to them in a private meeting or conference room with no one else around. Often, people don’t like to be critiqued in front of others and may become defensive if they have everyone in a nearby cubicle staring at them. Make sure you’re maintaining eye contact with them and that they aren’t looking at their computer screen or mobile device because they’re in the middle of working on a project. They should only be focused on you and what you’re saying.
3. Be Clear and Consistent
You can’t tell employees they’re doing something well one day and then criticize them for the very same thing the following day, or vice versa. This will only make them confused and will prevent them from heeding your direction and trusting your feedback in the future. They’ll assume you’re just making flippant remarks as you see fit. So, make note of the feedback you provide your employees so that you’re always consistent. And as you follow their progress, tell them clear and specific examples of how they have improved or incorporated previous feedback you’ve provided.
4. Be Prepared and Use Data and Verifiable Proof
Be sure to gather your thoughts and detailed examples with proof before you provide your employees with feedback. Think of the individuals and the most effective ways they like to receive feedback. Do they prefer e-mails, lunch meetings, etc.? Additionally, provide them with detailed examples for what they have done well and where they can improve. For example, you wouldn’t want to only say, “Please be sure to fill out your next sales report more accurately”; you would want to say something like, “Thanks for always getting your sales reports in before anyone else. However, please note that the data in line five should indicate expenditures and not income. Let me know if you have any questions.”
5. Submit Feedback Via Different Mediums
When possible, submit feedback to your employees using different mediums until you learn more about each individual and what mediums are most effective for each. For instance, some tactile learners may require a hands-on feedback session where you actively coach them on how to do something in a different way, while other learners are better at retaining and applying feedback that’s written down in an e-mail that they can refer to later.
Watch out for tomorrow’s post, which will highlight the remaining five tips and best practices for giving your employees valuable feedback.
1HubSpot. 11 Eye-Opening Statistics on the Importance of Employee Feedback [Infographic]. Accessed 2/26/2018.