In order to help companies measure how engaged their employees are, Gallup, a reaserch-based, global performance-management consulting company, created a survey that addresses the most important elements of employee engagement. According to its website, Gallup researchers spent decades writing and testing questions for the survey and came up with 12 true or false questions that yield accurate results. Because three of the questions–25 percent of the survey–relate to receiving feedback, we can surmise that employee feedback plays a big role in keeping employees happy, which in turn contributes to employee retention.
The three feedback questions from Gallup’s Q12 survey are:
- In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
- There is someone at work who encourages my development.
- In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
In the recent Dental Economics article “Performance management feedback: supporting long-term employee retention,” Brent Ericksen & Associates President Tim Twigg and HR Compliance Consultant Rebecca Boartfield write that while feedback isn’t a cure-all, it is both fundamental and necessary.
Measuring employee performance
While employees feedback might sound as simple as telling them they’re doing a good job, there are important steps that must be put into practice way before talking to your staff. “Clearly, employees want to receive feedback from someone at work,” the article reads. ” But before anyone can provide feedback, an employee’s performance must be monitored so the person’s superior knows what kind of feedback to give.” Twigg and Boartfield write that monitoring performance can be done in one of two ways: behavioral and quantifiable.
Ways to capture behavioral performance:
- Directly observing the employees performance
- Communicating with the employee about performance specifics and examples
- Getting feedback about the employees performance from supervisors, coworkers or patients
Ways to quantify performance:
- Have the employee set a list of goals and monitor his or her progress in meeting them
- Track measurable objectives such as the time it takes an employee to complete tasks and how successful he or she is in completing the task
Positive feedback is key
Twigg and Boartfield write that it’s important to remember that feedback needs to be positive. “Sometimes employees get so wrapped up in what’s wrong they lose sight of the fact that things many things are going right.”
When addressing the negatives in an employees performance, the coauthors suggest a constructive, future-focused approach by focusing on changeable behavior and what can be done in the future in order to achieve improvement. “What people say, how they go about their jobs and how they interact can be manages and coached,” they write. By focusing on the future you stay away from coming off as, ‘Let me tell you all the things you’ve done wrong’ and move toward, ‘Let’s find a solution for improvement.’
Future-focused feedback contains the same constructive points but is done in a way that doesn’t bash the employee with what went wrong that cannot be changed. People take this approach less personally, as it removes the feeling of being personally attacked. “We all know that when we’re receiving negative or constructive feedback, we tend to tune out the speaker and start developing responses in our head because we’re becoming defensive,” reads the article. “Future-focused feedback allows the listener to be fully engaged.”
Tips for providing feedback
For a successful feedback experience for both the manager and the employee, Twigg and Boartfield recommend structuring the feedback as a dialogue with the employee and not as a one-way street with the manager doing all the talking.
Listed below are four principles Twigg and Boartfield recommend to keep in mind when scheduling individual employee feedback meeting
- Timely. Do not wait to provide feedback. Use the next available time that is practical to provide feedback.
- Specific. Refrain from using generic phrases such as, “You did a great job.” These are vague and won’t give the employee he necessary insight to know what should be repeated and what should be avoided.
- Objective. To is particularly true of constructive feedback. It’s about the behavior, not the person. Describe what happened, what you saw and how it impacted the patient, team and office.
- Continuous. Both types of feedback (positive and constructive) should occur regularly in the employer/employee relationship.
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