5 Steps to Provide Productive Feedback

Businesses need feedback to be able to determine what their customers want. However, feedback doesn’t just have to be from customers, businesses can also give and receive feedback internally. This way, they are able to figure out the problems and rectify them.

Managers have to provide feedback to employees to tell them as to whether or not they are performing well. By giving feedback, managers can point out the specific problems of the business, as well as giving out suggestions or even solutions on how to solve the problems. So remember that feedback is very important to help achieve business success.

3 Types of Feedback

Employers providing feedback need to know that there are three different types of feedback that they can give out to employees. It all depends on the employer as to which type of feedback to hand out to an employee. So here are the three types:

• Positive Feedback. This is the kind that will always to apply to situations wherein an employee was able to do a good job. Positive reinforcement will always motivate an employee to do better. However, if one were to provide this type of feedback, it is very important to point out the specifics. You cannot just say “good job”, you have to point out what the employee did in detail to deserve your praise.

• Constructive employee review Some employees consider this as negative when it’s actually not, but is it not positive either. This is the kind of feedback that tells the employee that he or she can do better. So if one receives the result of such and sees that there are certain things that need improvement, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, this is the kind of feedback that needs to be handled delicately as even one wrong phrase could sound like the employee is being undermined.

• Negative. This is the kind of feedback that managers hand out to employees in the event that they wish to terminate their relationships with them. Sometimes this can even be done accidentally when a manager loses control and lets emotion take over professionalism. It is only given to those employees who have violated company policies, or have caused too many problems that could negatively effect the business. Although it is always best to avoid negative feedback, sometimes it cannot be helped.

The Importance of Feedback

Managers need to learn how to provide productive feedback, simply because it can help motivate employees as well as improve their performance. If one conducts a performance appraisal and can see that most employees are having problems, then management can go through each of them and tell them what their problems are.

This way, employees will now what issues they are having, as well as getting the help they need to overcome these issues to improve their performance. So remember that feedback can always help your business by helping you change and improve whatever needs to be.

5 Steps for Giving Productive Feedback

Although it can be a delicate process, providing effective feedback can help identify issues and fix them as soon as possible. So here are a few tips that can help you provide feedback that will ensure your business grows and succeeds:

• Don’t make it too personal. Whenever you’re providing someone with feedback, you have to phrase it in a manner that does not make the receiver uncomfortable. The main point of feedback is to point out certain things that someone has to work on, or the things that someone was able to do well. Use this as the opportunity to help the employee develop their skills and abilities to improve within the workplace.

•  Be positive. It’s always best to stay on a positive note so that the employee will not feel like they are being looked down on by their manager. Keep in mind that feedback should not focus mainly on positive aspects, but it is important to remember that positive reinforcement can help the employee feel more safe and secure. If you are going to provide any kind of negative feedback, it’s always best to provide advice or even the solution that can help the employee solve his or her problems.

• You must be specific. Whether it’s positive or negative feedback, you will have to be very specific with the details. So lets say that during an employee evaluation you want to point out that the employee was not able to meet the goal for the month. You will have to explain why the employee wasn’t able to achieve the goals, such as pointing out that he or she was slacking off too much or any other reason.

• Give feedback as soon as possible. It doesn’t help that if you put off giving feedback. It’s always best to give it immediately after the employee has done something right or wrong. So if one waits too long to hand out the feedback, the employee might not even remember what he or she did. And relying on memory which can be faulty and unreliable.

• Be tough when providing feedback, but not mean. Although providing constructive or negative feedback may be necessary, it’s always best to be as professional as possible. So even if you know that what the employee’s actions were stupid, you cannot just outright say that. Instead, what you should do is point out what the employee did wrong in a respectful manner and tell him or her what you expect. It is your job to encourage the employee and not scare that person.

One must remember that the main reason of providing feedback is to achieve success. By pointing out what’s wrong, you’ll be able to fix problems. By pointing out what is right, those are the parts of the business that must remain constant.

So in the event that you would like to provide feedback, then you may go through any of our feedback forms in Word for when you would like to learn more about how to provide feedback, as well as printing out feedback forms which you can utilize for your business.