If you want your employees to be productive members of your business, you need to provide them with feedback regularly. You must integrate this with the overall performance management process of your business, but there are a lot of people who struggle to provide effective feedback to their employees. If you do not do a good job of giving feedback, your employees might not know exactly what you want them to do. With this in mind, take a look at a few of the most important tips you should follow if you want to provide solid feedback to your employees. This could help you improve your retention rate.
Contents
1. Set a Regular Schedule and Stick To It
First, you need to make sure you set a regular schedule for your feedback. Nobody likes to be blindsided by constructive criticism, and you need to give your employer time to prepare appropriately. After all, these sessions always go better when it is a two-way street, and you need to give your employees an opportunity to speak up as well. If you surprise them with the feedback session, they are not going to be ready, and they will not be an active participant in the process. Try to set a regular schedule for your feedback sessions with your employees. That way, they will have time to prepare for this in advance.
2. Talk About the Behavior, Not The Person
Remember that these feedback sessions are about improving the behavior, operations, or habits of your employees. You are not there to criticize them as a person. Therefore, if you notice that one of your employees always seems to show up late, try not to say something like, “why are you always late to work?” Instead, say something like, “I have noticed that you appear to be showing up late from time to time, do you know why this is happening?” You are not there to criticize someone’s character, you are simply there to draw attention to behaviors that you might like to fix.
3. Do Not Beat Around the Bush
In addition, it is important for you to be direct when you are providing someone with feedback. There are a lot of managers who do not want to come out and say a bunch of negative things about someone’s work performance. Therefore, they simply try to be a bit more flowery with their language, taking a long time to get to the point. While you might be trying to do this to soften the blow, you are simply going to confuse the employee during the session. They might not realize that you are trying to give constructive criticism because you are taking so long to get to the point. Try to avoid running into this issue by being direct with the feedback you provide.
When you provide feedback to your employees, make sure that you give both positive feedback and constructive criticism. One of the most common reasons why employees leave is that they feel like they are not doing a good job. There are lots of situations where employees are doing a good job, but they simply do not know it because the manager is not taking the time to let them know that they are doing something right. Of course, you might feel like if it isn’t broken, you don’t need to fix it, but you still need to take the time to let your employees know when they are doing something right. Positive reinforcement is just as important as constructive criticism.
5. Ask for Feedback In Return
Finally, keep in mind that feedback has to be a two-way street. Once you are done giving feedback to your employees, make sure you give them an opportunity to provide you with feedback as well. This can go a long way toward helping you improve your skills as a manager, and it will let your employees know that you care about what they think. This could help you improve your retention rates.
Give Feedback To Your Employees Regularly
Even though there are a lot of people who hesitate to provide feedback to others, this is incredibly important if you want to run a successful business. Right now, there is a lot of competition for the most talented employees in various industries. If your employees feel like they are not valued, they are simply going to jump ship and go somewhere else. You do not want this to happen to you, so you need to make sure your employees understand just how much you value the work they put in every day. One of the ways to do that is to provide feedback to your employees. Make sure to implement a few of the tips above, and don’t forget to ask for feedback from your employees as well.
