The road to success is paved with good feedback and modern professionals are all for it. Daniel Coyle, in the book, ‘The Culture Code,’ says that building highly successful cultures involves high-candor feedback, uncomfortable truth-telling and confronting the gap between where the group is and where it ought to be.
Since modern employees are seeking purpose at work and prioritizing skill-building, they need open and timely feedback to grow exponentially.
But, you should know that traditional feedback practices like annual reviews, rating systems, and top-down feedback no longer serve the purpose. It’s time to move away from the old-school thought and deliver open feedback to engage and retain talent.
In this article, I will share some tips and practices to build an open feedback culture. Plus, I will tell you how you can use Venngage’s HR Report Maker to set up engaging feedback processes.
Click to jump ahead:
- Benefits of fostering a high-performance culture
- The pillars of a seamless feedback cycle
- 5 best practices for implementing a seamless feedback cycle
- Enable open feedback culture with Venngage
Benefits of fostering a high-performance culture
First, let’s understand why exactly we need an open feedback culture. The Feedback Fallacy Theory by Marcus Buckingham and Ashly Goodall states that traditional feedback is often based on false assumptions, including:
- The person giving the feedback has an objective reality and can assess the recipient’s shortcomings.
- Your colleagues can teach you how to do things better.
- Performance can be measured and described.
The theory says that all these assumptions are self-centered with respect to the person offering the feedback because the feedback is based on the giver’s characteristics and not the recipient’s characteristics.
Hence, instead of stating failures and telling people how to avoid them, feedback should be more focused on highlighting people’s achievements and showing them examples of how to excel.
This is possible in an open feedback culture — where employees and leaders can share feedback freely. In such cases, feedback is not viewed as criticism but as a medium to help people excel.
Simply put, leaders should do away with a critique-driven approach and focus on a coaching and mentoring approach to promote an open feedback culture.
Let’s discuss the benefits of open feedback.
1. Creates a culture of continuous improvement
An open feedback culture encourages all team members to share and seek feedback positively and regularly. This continuous process of exchange of ideas helps employees get real-time insights into how they can improve their performance, thus promoting continuous improvement and growth.
Michael Nemeroff, CEO of Rush Order Tees, says, “We’ve built a culture around real-time feedback by integrating apps with task management tools. Instead of waiting for quarterly reviews or end-of-project summaries, our team gets instant feedback on their work. It’s like having a conversation, but in real-time, right where the work is happening.
This setup has made feedback way more relevant and immediate. If someone nails a project, they know right away. If there’s an issue, we can correct the course before it becomes a bigger problem. It’s all about being in the moment and not letting things fester.”
You can even create mind maps to execute common feedback by connecting ideas and collaborating with people.
To convert ideas into action plans seamlessly, try this mind map template from Venngage.
2. Improves employee engagement
An open feedback culture promotes active employee participation where employees don’t hesitate to seek feedback from their peers or managers. Result? They become more aware of how their tasks and performance contribute to the organization’s overall success. This helps employees feel empowered and motivated.
You can share employees’ contributions to a company’s growth through interactive HR reports. Here is an HR report template you can customize to add company-specific goals and employees’ performance.
3. Helps retain top talent
Growth and development are the top priorities for modern professionals. Open feedback culture helps employees assess their strengths and weaknesses, identify opportunities for improvement and make them feel valued. This helps increase employee satisfaction and reduce employee turnover.
“We’ve observed a 25% decrease in turnover since embracing this (open) culture of feedback. While there have been challenges such as resistance, the positive impact on morale and productivity has been remarkable. A supportive environment for feedback nurtures employee development and propels the organization toward innovation and success.”
Maxime Bouillon, Co-founder & CEO of Archie
The pillars of a seamless feedback cycle
Now, let’s see the key components you should include in your feedback processes.
1. Continuous feedback
“The intent to leave or stay in a job is only one of the things that people are questioning as part of the larger human story we are living,” says Caitlin Duffy, Research Director in Gartner’s HR practice. There’s no denying that employees are seeking value and purpose at work.
Plus, ‘Opportunities to advance’ is considered one of the core principles of the Employee Value Proposition Theory. Continuous feedback is the anchor that binds advancement opportunities, value, and purpose to everyday work experiences, helping employees achieve their goals by constantly learning and unlearning.
Also, continuous feedback is not just important for employees. Even companies need to shorten their feedback cycle. The phrase “A stitch in time saves nine,” seems apt here. Rather than waiting for year-end reviews, you can immediately improve employees’ performance through continuous feedback.
Here are some tips to promote a continuous feedback culture in your organization:
Make feedback a habit
To ensure a continuous feedback culture, you need to embed feedback into the daily routine. Encourage employees to share feedback in real time or at the end of meetings or projects, rather than waiting for formal reviews.
However, remember that too much feedback can overwhelm employees and lead to feedback fatigue. To avoid this, you should encourage your team to focus on quality feedback over quantity.
You can schedule weekly check-ins with your team to discuss feedback. Based on our discussions with HR leaders and business managers, many companies have a system called ‘Feedback Fridays.’ It’s an org-wide weekly or bi-weekly Friday meeting where teams discuss feedback and have honest conversations about work performance.
There can be some roadblocks initially but gradually team members get accustomed to open feedback.
Chris Yang, Co-founder of Coins Value, says that 92% of his team members admitted to feeling at ease while giving feedback to their colleagues and superiors in their recent employee engagement survey.
Emelie Linheden, VP of Marketing at Younium also says that since implementing Feedback Fridays:
- There’s a 40% increase in employee engagement scores.
- Internal Net Promoter Score improved by 25 points.
- 85% of their team feels more comfortable giving and receiving feedback.
Gamify feedback
Gamification is one of the best ways to keep employees engaged and ensure continuous feedback in the workplace.
You can seek inspiration from Zappos, an online shoe and clothing company. It has created an interesting peer-to-peer feedback system where employees can gift ‘Zollars’ to their peers who they feel are doing WOW work. Employees receiving Zollars can redeem them to purchase items from the Zollar Store by Zappos. This makes giving and receiving feedback a fun and engaging experience.
I am sharing a template below that you can use to give detailed feedback to employees on their performance, cooperation, and behavior.
To gamify feedback, you can introduce badges or achievements for employees based on how well they work on their feedback.
For example, employees with a score between 0-50 can fall into the improvement needed category. You can implement specialized mentoring programs for them, conduct mandatory training sessions and frequent check-ins with managers.
Similarly, employees falling in the 71-85 bracket can be given the ‘High Achiever’ badge. You can offer them leadership training, involve them in high-level projects, give extra time-off or provide gift cards, etc.
Visualize feedback
While giving actionable feedback is important, you can enhance the feedback by visualizing data. For instance, look at the HR report template below. It shows the percentage of goals achieved and feedback incorporated, among other things.
Visualizing feedback provides more actionable insights. It helps employees understand their strengths and weaknesses, making it easier to find ways to improve their performance.
2. One-on-one feedback
Open feedback and peer reviews are helpful. But, it’s also important for employees and managers to sync once in a while for personalized feedback sessions. It helps with focused discussions where employees and managers talk about unique challenges or goals.
For instance, in my biweekly 1:1 with my manager, we discuss team goals, my individual goals, my growth path, the initiatives I can take, any blockers, and how I can perform better.
You can use a simple template as the one below for 1:1 discussions.
3. Performance management
While continuous feedback is great, it should also be systematic. Performance management helps set a defined structure for employee feedback. It involves setting achievable goals, providing constant feedback, reviewing performance regularly, and building employee growth and development plans. This ensures employees get consistent feedback.
Research suggests that people who receive continuous performance feedback show higher performance levels, motivation to improve and increased task engagement.
Here is a simple template you can use to track and improve your employees’ performance.
4. Proper reporting and reviews
Remember I mentioned feedback fatigue earlier? Just discussing feedback without taking action on it doesn’t serve the purpose. Organizations need proper feedback reporting and review systems to ensure accountability and track progress.
Documenting feedback and tracking performance data also helps leaders and managers make data-driven decisions for employee retention or training.
To set an efficient performance reporting and review system, you can use the employee performance review template shared below.
5. Training and development
You have given actionable feedback to your employees. What’s the next step? Let’s say you suggested a team member to improve their programming skills. Now, the focus should be on helping them improve their skills. One of the best ways to go ahead is to offer them training and mentorship.
That’s why training and development programs are a critical part of the feedback process. You can use the below-given template to set program goals to assess employees’ progress and calculate the ROI of training programs.
6. Recognition and rewards
A great way to encourage an open feedback culture in the workplace is to promote recognition and rewards. It reinforces positive behavior as employees see their efforts being valued and sets performance benchmarks. Cherry on the top is healthy competition among your team members.
Here are some ways you can implement recognition and rewards in the workplace:
- Give shout-outs in meetings.
- Announce employee of the month and share certificates for excellent performance. Something like this:
- Share employee achievements on social media channels.
- Offer stock options and bonuses.
- Give extra paid time off to high-performing employees.
- Plan team off-sites on achieving team goals.
5 best practices for implementing a seamless feedback cycle
Deloitte is a great example of building an effective feedback culture in the workplace. They conducted a public survey which revealed that their performance management process was not helping with employee engagement or improving performance.
To top it all, the company was spending 2 million hours in a year on performance management. 360-degree feedback and annual reviews didn’t work for them. So, they implemented a new performance management system whose highlight was weekly check-ins between employees and managers.
My point is — implementing a seamless feedback cycle requires seeking feedback from employees and finding unique solutions that work for your organization. Analyze your work culture, employees’ expectations, feedback goals, and other factors to set up a feedback culture that actually works for your team.
Let’s see some practices that can help you implement a seamless feedback cycle:
1. Set clear expectations
Imagine if someone gave you feedback to improve the accounting process in the company. Would you take it seriously as an HR professional? Probably not — because that doesn’t fall in your key responsibility area (KRA). You’d probably ask the person to speak with someone from the accounting department.
That’s exactly what happens with employees. When their roles aren’t clearly defined, the feedback is hardly valuable. To be able to understand the feedback, they should at least know where to incorporate it. You need to define clear responsibilities, goals and performance expectations for employees.
Set objectives and key results (OKRs) for each team member to give them a proper direction. Also ensure that your feedback is aligned with their performance, goals, and expectations so they feel motivated to work on it.
Here is an OKR Report Template by Venngage that you can use to define OKRs for different teams or employees.
2. Train managers and leaders
While organizations know the importance of feedback, implementing feedback processes becomes a major challenge. The common barriers to providing feedback are:
- Introverted managers and leaders feel uncomfortable giving feedback.
- Managers are afraid to make things worse by giving feedback that may be not received well.
- Leaders lack the skill to provide efficient feedback.
So, promoting an open feedback culture has to start from the top. You need to train managers on how to provide and seek feedback. Conduct regular training sessions, workshops, and assessments to teach managers and leaders the skill of giving actionable feedback.
Mark Pierce, CEO of Wyoming Trust, says, they have initiated a mentorship program focused on feedback from the ground up. New team members are paired with seasoned pros to master the art of giving and getting feedback and having conversations about real scenarios.
Derek Pankaew, founder of Listening.com, suggests designing interactive e-learning courses. His team has included feedback exercises and peer reviews that feel like real-world situations. They have also implemented peer review sessions where team members review each other’s work, in front of their peers to make everyone comfortable with receiving and sharing feedback.
3. Utilize technology
Modern tools and technology have been game changers in promoting open feedback culture in organizations. Here is how you can leverage them:
- Use HR software: You can use centralized feedback software for employee engagement where your team members can receive and give feedback easily. Look for platforms that offer intuitive dashboards to visualize feedback data.
- Collect employee feedback: Since employees are the main subject of the open feedback culture, you should seek inputs from them — understand their challenges and recommendations to improve your culture.
- Create visual reports: Once you’ve collected the data, you can create interactive infographics and reports to analyze employees’ sentiments.
Here is an HR report template you can use to record employee feedback and share the insights with the stakeholders.
Also, infographics and interactive reports make it easy to share relevant information with employees. This promotes transparency, honest communication, and ultimately, open feedback in the organization.
4. Use the COIN framework
Effective feedback 101: Give specifics!
Sharing feedback with employees can be a tough job, especially when balancing honesty with empathy. However, many leaders also struggle to give specific and actionable feedback, which makes employees lose confidence in them.
Here is an example of how vague feedback bothers employees:
In response to the above statement, Inc.com columnist Alison Green, agrees, that lack of specifics can make employees defensive.
If you too, are passing on feedback without backing it up with instances, chances are your team members consider you thoughtless. Employees might not even take the feedback seriously. You can try the COIN Framework to give valuable feedback:
- Context: First, highlight a specific situation or give a background to share feedback. For example, “In the last team meeting…,” “For XYZ client/project…”
- Observation: Then, share your observations — “I noticed you took ABC initiative and took ownership of the project by doing….”
- Impact: Next, share the impact of an employee’s action on the team or project. For instance, “Because of your unique ideas and contributions, the campaign had X views and Y conversions…”
- Next step: Lastly, suggest actionable steps or tips in how the employee can improve and work on their skills or behavior.
This structure helps employees understand the feedback better and promotes a supportive environment.
5. Encourage open communication
Open communication in the workplace is quite underrated. Many organizations follow a traditional hierarchy where top-down communication approach is followed. This often leads to miscommunication, fear of speaking up, lack of personalized feedback, and fewer mentorship opportunities.
Promoting an open communication culture makes employees feel valued and respected. They can share their opinions freely, discuss ideas, and ask for candid feedback. All in all, open communication makes your team feel empowered and motivated.
One approach you could follow to improve communication is Management by Walking Around (MBWA). It refers to going to employees’ desks and engaging with them in informal discussions. You can also share immediate feedback with employees instead of waiting for annual reviews.
In a remote and hybrid setup, the equivalent to MBWA could be virtual check-ins through messages and video calls.
Conducting regular surveys to seek employee feedback also helps in a virtual setup. Your team can voice their opinions without fear of judgment and you can gauge overall team sentiment without being physically present.
Try this Employee Engagement Survey Form template to seek employee feedback and take actionable steps to improve communication in the organization.
Enable open feedback culture with Venngage
Open and honest feedback is crucial for any organization to thrive. However, what’s more important is incorporating the feedback effectively. This is where data visualization comes in handy. It helps you get detailed insights into employees’ overall performance and their satisfaction levels.
You can even visualize feedback to give better context and clarity to employees. Try infographic tools like Venngage to enhance your feedback culture. With Venngage’s HR Report Maker, you can customize a variety of Venngage’s HR Report Templates to create interactive reports, analyze and share employee feedback results, and identify areas of improvement!
