Creating an Organisational Feedback Culture

• Task performance refers to how well a person does the job for which they are employed. This can be broadly defined as relating to producing the goods or services for which the company receives remuneration. It is specifically skills related.
• Contextual performance covers more broad characteristics, like dedication, loyalty, conscientiousness, organizational citizenship, helpfulness and interpersonal skills. These aptitudes are likely to be most closely associated with personality.
• Adaptive performance relates to how well an employee can adapt, change or learn to suit changing situations or requirements, as well as how they handle unexpected situations or emergencies.

Think about each of these areas and how relevant they are to every position or department. Even if you choose to collect information on all areas for all staff, for the sake of uniformity, think about weighting the information according to its relevance to their position and responsibilities.

Who will Provide Feedback?

When deciding who should provide feedback, it is worth thinking about the unique perspectives people with different relationships may have with a person. Managers especially may have to perform vastly differing roles in various situations, so collecting data from more than one source could be useful in forming a better picture of their performance. While their direct supervisor is an obvious and traditional source of feedback, consider the following as well:

• Peers may be able to judge capabilities in areas like communications, team work and job-specific skills.
• Clients, if applicable, could be a good source for assessing customer service and communications abilities.
• Team members might provide valuable insight into leadership and people management skills.
• Self-assessment may be the most important of all, as it encourages people to think about their own performance and decide for themselves where they feel they could improve or learn.

These days, many organizations are using a combination of some or all of these as a standard part of their employee development program. Multisource feedback, as exemplified by the 180-degree and 360-degree models, is a common method of collating a full, rounded picture of an employee’s performance. See 180-degree and 360-degree Feedback for more information on these models.

In particular, think about the benefits of upward feedback. This can have a great benefit for self-awareness and development of people management skills. Within this, consider including yourself in the feedback process. Not only will this give you the opportunity for self-development, but senior managers are more likely to be receptive to upwards feedback if they are encouraged to provide it to their own superiors. Think of yourself as a role model for the acceptance and implementation of feedback.

Another important factor to consider here is anonymity. Choosing whether or not to allow peers, clients and, in particular, team members, anonymity when providing feedback is a key decision. Allowing them to remain anonymous could have benefits and drawbacks. People will naturally be worried about damaging interpersonal relationships with critical feedback and are therefore likely to be more lenient or less frank when they are aware that the recipient will know the feedback came from them.

When giving upwards feedback, this is magnified as it also extends to concerns about job security dependent upon their relationship with their immediate boss. Introducing a feedback method which allows you to collect anonymous input about an employee may remove these obstacles, providing better constructive feedback; however, there is a downside. Removing accountability for feedback provided opens up the possibility of individual relationships or personal grievances affecting the accuracy of information.

Clearly explaining the importance of feedback accuracy and how it will be used for personal development can help. You may also consider using an intermediary, like the HR department or an external coach, for whom the information is not anonymous, but who maintains the anonymity of the sources to the recipient. This solution may mitigate both issues and generate the most accurate, useful feedback.

How will You Gather and Deliver Feedback?

The options for feedback collection vary from as little as asking a supervisor to perform an appraisal of a team member, through the distribution of formal feedback forms, all the way to an integrated software system which automatically collates and delivers feedback to staff. Choose a method which suits your organization’s size, structure and needs, in discussion with the relevant departments (HR, L&D, IT etc.) who will have to be involved.

If you opt for a ratings system with multiple feedback sources, be sure to deliver the results in such a way as to make them meaningful. If you will be providing ratings alone, give them as much context as possible. Consider showing the highest, lowest and average scores they receive for each area, as well as the same figures for their peers in similar positions. Alongside ratings, commentary from feedback sources is often more useful in helping employees identify specific areas for learning or improvement, so consider allowing scope for this type of open-ended input as well.

Think also about who should deliver the feedback. A one-to-one meeting with the person’s direct supervisor is traditional, but there is an inherent element of perceived threat to job security or pay involved in this relationship which may increase the recipient’s defensiveness to any constructive feedback. Using a member of HR staff instead may assist with limiting any potential damage to working relationships. You might even choose to have an external HR professional, coach or psychologist deliver the collated information. They can also then work with the employee to decide how best to use the feedback for their personal development, without the employee feeling any risk of monetary or career implications.

Another option, within a computerized system, is to have a feedback report delivered to the recipient automatically - by email, for example. This could be an efficient system, but the downside is that there is no strong impetus for the person to act upon the information in this case, unless they are a naturally motivated, self-aware person. In this instance, consider also sending the report to their direct superior, with their knowledge. Knowing their boss has also seen the data may make them more likely to take it seriously and demonstrate that they have taken it onboard.

When Will Feedback be Given?

To successfully build feedback into an organization, it should be happening all the time. To encourage this, consider establishing a system along the following lines:

• ongoing: informal feedback to individuals on an ad hoc basis
• weekly/monthly: one-to-one catch ups between employees and managers
• quarterly: formal feedback mechanism (e.g. 360-degree)
• biannually/annually: performance reviews

The regular, informal feedback should include encouraging managers and supervisors to praise staff regularly, as appropriate. This should help keep them more open to constructive feedback, when it comes.

Why do You Want Feedback?

The question of what you are going to do with the feedback once you have it is crucial. Think about your main motivation. Is it to aid staff development or is it to make appropriate administrative decisions on promotion and pay? Or both? Research has shown that when employees know their feedback will be used for recognition and reward, they tend to be more lenient, so this should be taken into account.

When introducing a new feedback system to your organization, it may be worth limiting its use to development initially, for a period of up to two years, before deciding to use it as a basis for administrative decisions. This will allow everyone to become accustomed to it and see its benefits for development, rather than potentially fostering distrust if it is initially seen as mainly for pay and promotion decisions.

Whatever you decide, make the decision at the beginning and communicate this openly to everyone in the business. If the process is initially understood to be only for development but employees later learn it is being used for pay and promotion decisions, this could damage morale and trust within the organization.

Implementation

Once you have made all of these decisions, the next step is communication. Speak to the departments who are going to need to be involved in the process you have designed and establish when you can implement any necessary systems. Then communicate with all staff, explaining to them what is going to be happening, when it will happen and what the purpose is. Again, if everyone understands both the importance and relevance of the feedback process, the data collected should be more accurate, honest and helpful.

Summary

To embed a culture of feedback into your organization, you need to be clear about exactly what your aims are and how you want to achieve them. Considering the what, who, how, when and why of the situation to form a clear vision for your organization, then communicating that vision to all employees should form the basis of a cultural shift to using feedback for the benefit of individuals, teams and the whole business. The attached worksheet, Planning to Introduce Formal Feedback to an Organization, should help you answer the above questions and begin to formulate a plan for creating a feedback culture within your organization.