Yesterday’s post offered five tips and best practices for giving your employees valuable feedback. Here are five additional tips:
6. Make it Timely and Relevant
When providing feedback, ensure it’s timely and relevant. Don’t procrastinate in giving feedback, even if it’s challenging. For example, if brand-new customer service representatives fail to follow a certain script when necessary, tell them as soon as possible. If you tell them 3 weeks later, after they’ve already helped hundreds of customers, they won’t be as receptive to the feedback or won’t ultimately follow it because it never mattered before. And don’t bring up feedback that is not relevant to your employees. For example, if you offer them feedback on how to answer phones but they only operate machinery, they’ll think you’re being nitpicky for no reason.
7. Offer Ongoing Feedback
Sometimes it can be easy to only offer criticism and feedback when things go wrong but never offer feedback when things go very well and better than expected. Don’t just offer your employees criticisms, even if you’re still always positive. Eventually, it will get old and will come across as if you’re nagging.
You’ll also want to offer employees feedback for things they did really well, especially when they have improved due to past feedback they’ve considered and implemented. Be sure to offer feedback on an ongoing basis (e.g., once a week or once every other week) so your employees understand that you’re there to help them improve, not to berate them or nitpick. Over time, they’ll get used to receiving a mixture of feedback, which will only strengthen their resolve.
8. Focus on Strengths
Did you know that employees are 30 times more likely to be engaged at work when managers focus on their individual strengths?1 So, as you’re offering feedback, you’ll want to focus on strengths and what your employees already do well so that you can put the feedback in context for them. For instance, if you’re trying to train a highly organized employee on how to manage a particular project, focus on his or her ability to keep things organized when providing feedback for managing the project.
And if an employee is great at encouraging collaboration on teams, offer feedback related to collaboration when coaching him or her on how to lead a team or project.
9. Ask Questions and Listen to Questions
Let your employees ask you questions when you provide them with feedback. This will give them the opportunity to really understand what you’re telling them. Don’t just send them an e-mail with feedback and never follow up with them. When you offer feedback, it should sometimes spark a conversation that’s rooted in the learning process. You’ll also want to ask them questions to ensure they know why your feedback is helpful, as well as how they can apply it.
10. Provide Clear Expectations for Improvement
Employees won’t be motivated to apply feedback you offer them if they aren’t clear about what’s expected of them overall, too. For instance, you can’t give them tips for how to land more sales without also indicating how many sales they should be landing or working toward. You’ll want to lay out clear sales numbers and quotas they should be meeting, as well as tips on how they can meet those numbers and quotas.
Be sure to use the tips mentioned above and in yesterday’s post if you want your employees to benefit from your feedback.
1HubSpot. 11 Eye-Opening Statistics on the Importance of Employee Feedback [Infographic]. Accessed 2/26/2018.