Helpful Tips to Give Great Feeback & Document Employee Behavior
It’s important for managers to understand their employees’ strengths and weaknesses in order to provide effective feedback. When you already know what they’re good at and what is being improved, you can provide better quality feedback for your employees. Here are some tips to help you get started.
Treat Your Employees like Real People
This is the most obvious part of evaluations but sometimes it can get lost in the day-to-day. Humans are at the root of all business and understanding employees on a human level is extremely important especially when it comes to feedback and evaluations. Your workers are not lifeless machines; they are just like you and experience emotions, insecurities, and more on a daily basis. You don’t want to be treated like a robot, so the same can be said for your employees. Not only understanding but also treating people like human beings is essential when it comes to workplace evaluations and good, constructive feedback.
Document Everything You Can
This is arguably the most important step in the evaluation process. Making sure to correct and document employee behavior as it happens is the most effective way to ensure that you are providing the best feedback that you can give. It can also save a lot of time and headache when it’s time to deliver evaluations.
Leading up to evaluations, do your best to keep proper track of employee behavior and performance to help smooth out the process on both ends. In most instances, this documentation process will take the form of a paper trail. Emails and other team collaboration programs are a great way to make sure that any kind of response or interaction is logged and saved for later. This can be used to pinpoint and give validity to feedback and support.
Another good practice is to have employees do this themselves. Having employees evaluate themselves on tasks can help to remove the one-sidedness of their evaluations. This way, your employees will remember how they’ve prioritized certain tasks, managed their time, and allows the opportunity for them to proactively correct their performance. This practice also leaves room for discussion during the evaluation to limit the feeling of a one-sided conversation.
Provide Constructive Criticism
Feedback should not be taken personally and it should never be given in a condescending or negative manner. If you find you or the employee are getting defensive when providing feedback, it may be time to reevaluate your approach to giving feedback.
Remember, you want to provide constructive criticism rather than just telling someone what they did wrong. One simple way to do this is the compliment sandwich method: give your employee a compliment about their work, then constructive feedback on what they can improve, and close with another positive.
Keep the Conversation Short & Simple
The goal here isn’t to bore your workers with long conversations about everything they did wrong. Keep the conversation short and simple. Focus on the positive things they did well and let them know where they could improve. Don’t forget to mention anything specific that they did well as well.
Providing the Feedback
Providing feedback can actually be the hardest part in many circumstances, especially when the potential for conflict is present. It is essential in these moments to be constructive and friendly but also cut and dry and to the point. Don’t forget to rely on the documents you’ve generated as well.
Many people tend to struggle when providing feedback to employees. It is very easy to get caught up in the emotion and forget about the facts. By being clear and concise with your feedback you can avoid getting into an emotional conversation and instead focus on what matters most for your business.
How can CourtSide help?
Our HR professional, Courtney Berg, can help you create a personalized process to document employee behavior that best aligns with your needs and production goals. We will make sure your evaluation process is the best it can possibly be, for employees and managers alike.
Ready to take the CourtSide approach?
Schedule your consultation with our HR expert Courtney Berg today and gain best practices to document employee behavior at your company.