3 Important Reasons to Give Frequent Employee Feedback

If you’re an informed, strategic HR professional, you’re well aware that traditional annual performance reviews are rapidly falling out of favor within many companies. Reserving employee feedback for one session per year is like asking sports coaches to meet with their teams only once per season.

But performance reviews are incredibly important for both employee and employer. According to McKinsey, businesses that focus on performance are 4.2 times more likely to outperform competitors and experience lower attrition rates.

Managers and HR specialists are beginning to realize this need for change, and they’re switching over to the frequent employee feedback model of performance management. This model aims to provide consistent feedback, and facilitates a constructive communication flow between managers and team members.

What about your organization? If you or your management team are still on the fence about using frequent employee feedback in performance management, read on. We’ll tell you the three biggest reasons your employees are going to embrace the change.

1. It’s Relevant

Employees appreciate consistent, frequent, and relevant feedback to help guide them along their career path. They look to HR professionals and senior members of staff to provide this guidance, and keep them on the right track.

Employees want feedback on an ongoing basis while they’re trying to stay the course. In fact, according to a BambooHR survey, 51% of non-management and non-HR employees prefer to receive regular feedback as they complete projects or in casual, convenient one-on-ones with their managers. This is opposed to only 18% who prefer annual performance reviews. Your team members will be happy to know when they’re on the right track, and when they need a course correction.

Imagine the last road trip you took with friends or family where someone else was giving you directions. You might have made a few wrong turns, but they were easy corrections to make as soon as the navigator got you back on track. Now imagine if that person waited an hour before telling you that you’d made a wrong turn. By then, you’d be miles off course.

When people navigate their career path, they need consistent reminders and directions to reach their destination. Managers are the ones with the complete roadmaps. If they aren’t able to share that information until months after an employee has veered off course, what hope does that employee have of finding their way back?

How Often Should You Give Employee Feedback?

This will depend on the individual in question and how your teams are structured. However, it’s good to maintain a steady stream of regular employee feedback, which may mean checking in with employees in weekly one-to-ones. You could also organize longer monthly catch-ups, which allows you to discuss any issues in more detail and have a constructive conversation.

2. It’s Constructive

When so much pressure rides on one performance review, people can fall into fight-or-flight mode. With employees and managers alike being prepared to defend their point of view, even a small piece of negative criticism can spark a fire. It may be difficult to improve upon this if a single review is the only environment where people can exchange feedback.

Meanwhile, when feedback is offered regularly, the environment becomes more casual, relaxed, and open. It turns into part of the regular workflow, so criticism doesn’t hit as heavily and praise isn’t a rare reward or prize to be won.

So, consistency and constructiveness are key when looking to maintain employee performance and morale. Indeed, Gallup found that 80% of employees who’ve received recent meaningful feedback are fully engaged at work.

But what’s meaningful feedback? To have the most impact, feedback needs to be frequent, individualized, and development-focused (geared toward improving performance in the future).

Plus, with consistent practice, both employees and managers will get better at offering and receiving feedback that’s specific, helpful, and tactful. This will also help to encourage employees to provide feedback about how the process is organized, and ensure things run smoothly and effectively on both sides. Soon, performance management will be a positive practice among your workforce, instead of a high-pressure event to end the year.

Key Types of Employee Feedback

3. It’s Actionable

The equation seems quite simple:

relevant + constructive = actionable

When you provide frequent feedback for employees that’s specific and related to recent work, they can act on it. It’s impossible for them to change what happened earlier this month. But with effective performance management, they can navigate and improve what’s going to happen over the course of their future at your business.

When employees only get year-long snapshots of their performance, it’s difficult to focus on making real improvements. There’s simply too much on the to-do list, and it’s easy to become overwhelmed. It’s also much easier for a manager to be vague with feedback when there’s such a long period between reviews.

Breaking the year up into smaller, more manageable periods (months, quarters, etc.) will allow managers to create meaningful, specific employee feedback and help employees move forward with a clear plan of action.

Employees across industries and organizations have spoken: frequent employee feedback is the way to go. When managers provide consistent, valuable feedback, employees will respond by making consistent, valuable improvements to their performance. So be a good coach, and give your team what they need to excel. It will be a win for your entire organization.