The only way to help employees improve their job performance is to offer effective feedback. Yet, since most feedback is delivered as a criticism of the employee, many workers don’t react well when feedback is offered. Here are three ways to give effective feedback that your workers will receive well and will learn from.
Positive Criticism
Many people don’t take criticism well because it is often delivered in a negative fashion. The manager may have good intentions, but when he or she offers feedback the worker may take it as a personal attack instead of a means of improvement.
Instead of just telling an employee what they are doing wrong, offer positive criticism by also telling the individual what they are doing right. For example, if a worker turns in a project late you can say “I can see you took a lot of time with this project and you did good work. Next time please try to also meet the deadline of the project so that I can do my job as well as you do yours.”
Be Specific with Your Feedback
While you are creating a positive statement regarding the feedback you want to offer, you also want to make sure that the criticism is specific enough that an employee can see exactly what they did wrong. So, instead of just saying “This report isn’t what I asked you for,” explain what is missing. “I needed the exact sales figures for the widgets we sold last quarter and how those figures can be used to adjust inventory for this quarter.”
Letting your workers know exactly what they did wrong will help them not repeat the same mistake next time.
Suggest Possible Improvements
Another way you can use feedback to help an employee to improve is to offer suggestions. Give the person a few ideas for how they can do things differently to improve their performance. Otherwise they may become frustrated and resist your feedback instead of learning from it.
You can tell them “When you create reports you tend to get bogged down in the details. While details are important, you need to make sure that the information is balanced with ideas on how we can use this information to improve our sales performance.”
Feedback is an essential part of a manager’s job and an important element for employee growth. Effective feedback that is specific, positive and includes suggestions for improvement will help employees see that you are trying to help them and will learn from the information you give them.
Staffing your department with employees who are efficient and experienced will also make it easier for you to offer effective feedback. Contact us today and our agents can help you find candidates who are looking to learn and grow in their new position.