6 Ways To Build A Feedback Driven Culture That Inspires Healthy Communication
Creating a feedback-rich culture leans on the foundation of trust, healthy communication and safety. The onus is on leadership to establish healthy habits centered around communication and eliminate the toxic ones.
A healthy culture derives from healthy and honest feedback between employees at all layers of an organization. Without feedback, organizations remain stagnant and hold themselves back. Feedback helps to shape individuals by correcting their mistakes, recognizing their strengths and setting objectives to help them grow. However, feedback has become something employees and managers dread. This is the result of poor communication when delivering feedback causing the receiver to shut down or become defensive.
Here are six ways companies can build a feedback-driven culture that inspires healthy communication.
Make It A Part Of The Process From Day One
It’s important for companies to illustrate that feedback is important on all levels of the organization. This can be done by having a manager and/or an onboarding buddy that delivers and seeks feedback, distributing a survey, making feedback an integral part of a town hall or meeting.
Tatyana Tyagun, HR generalist at Chanty, shared, “we have a small training program where we teach our employees how to leave feedback in a meaningful way, when to leave it and how to react to feedback once they receive it.” She added, “by incorporating this training in your onboarding process, you’re making sure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to leaving feedback. We have it recorded in video form and every team member can access it at a later point as well.
When something such as feedback becomes a habit, it naturally becomes a part of the company culture. Change takes time and it requires buy-in from everyone in the organization. A culture that never asked for employee feedback, opinions or ideas will take longer to adjust than one that already has established solid communication with their team.
Explain The Why
Oftentimes, companies put practices or policies into place without explaining the why behind them. They point out what an employee is doing wrong without explaining why it’s wrong and how it can be fixed.
Sonya Schwartz, founder of Her Norm, explained, “the ability to receive and giving feedback must be developed like a skill that is why you as a brand need to give your employees the training and resources they need to be good at giving and receiving feedback.
Feedback shouldn’t just occur between an employee and their manager but also between their peers. The goal of seeking and delivering feedback is to improve performance and workplace relationships.
Michelle Devania, founder of lovedevani, shared “if people know the reason behind asking for feedback, they would know which kind of feedback they will give.”
Educate On The How
Delivering feedback isn’t always easy. It’s why most don’t do it. Contrarily, when feedback is given, it’s given incorrectly ultimately harming the employee experience instead of improving it. Taking the time to educate everyone, regardless of title or rank, on how to deliver feedback is fundamental in creating a feedback-driven culture.
Taking the time to bring awareness on embracing criticism instead of rejecting it will help receivers from going on the defensive and shutting down instead of using feedback as a learning opportunity. When training, make it interactive by pairing individuals and having them practice as well as providing real-life workplace examples. This helps them to connect what they learn into real-life workplace scenarios.
Create A Safe Environment
Employees will only feel comfortable giving feedback, especially to their superiors, if they feel safe and are certain they won’t face negative repercussions for doing so. Managers and HR must nurture relationships where employees feel comfortable coming forward with negative feedback without the fear of losing their job or being retaliated against. Carole Burman, managing director at MAD-HR, an HR consultancy, said, “it’s important to be respectful and not force feedback.”
If one isn’t already implemented, companies should implement and consistently communicate their anti-retaliation policy in addition to encouraging employees to be honest about things they see that could be damaging or improved upon within the company. Employees are the ones who are on the frontline with customers and clients and aware of the problems and see where things can be improved. It’s imperative that their voices are heard if businesses truly want to improve.
Typically, employees go to HR with any concerns they have. However, HR can sometimes fail to communicate those concerns to management and leadership. It’s HR’s responsibility to gain leadership's buy-in and make them aware of what’s going on internally. It does everyone a disservice when information is withheld or filtered to the point where the original concern is altered.
Be An Example
Employees look up to leadership to see what they’re doing and how they’re behaving and responding. Sonya Schwartz, founder of Her Norm, shared, “when a leader sets a good example eventually the team will follow their lead.” Employees shouldn’t be the only ones receiving and asking for feedback. Leaders should be doing the same.
Burman explained, “leaders must hone their ability to give and receive feedback and set the example. They must consistently ask for feedback, at all levels, and visibly show that they receive feedback well.”
It goes without saying, diversity inspires greatness within companies. If the entire leadership team is comprised of white males, women and underrepresented employees are less likely to speak up. To set an example, companies need to create environments that represent all members of their workplace. This starts by creating a more diverse leadership team.
Choose The Right Tool
While leaders often don’t find it hard to provide feedback to their employees, employees are fearful to provide feedback to their superiors. For this reason, it’s important to explore various styles of feedback such as anonymous, one-on-one, and 360 feedback, to name a few.
Finding the right tool helps to create a structured process for feedback. For some companies, that might be an anonymous reporting channel, for others, it could be hosting a discussion format during a company town hall. This might require a bit of trial and error until the right tool or tools are discovered.
Gabrielle Loverde, operations manager at BluShark Digital, shared, “our employees sit down with management on a biweekly basis to discuss their pain points and how we can improve.” She added, “each week, our management team gathers to evaluate that feedback and change policies accordingly in real-time so in addition to feeling heard our team members know that we actively value and implement their ideas.”
Conducting frequent one-on-one’s are invaluable to the success, growth and betterment of any company culture regardless of industry. It’s up to the manager to lead the one-on-one in a way that is informal yet structured. Having a corporate feel to a conversation makes employees reluctant to open up truthfully about anything negative for fear of retaliation. Furthermore, employees often feel their feedback will be lost in a void and won’t be taken seriously.
Having the right tool in place will help track feedback as well as keep a record of progress and changes. HR can partner with a tool such as 15Five to send out frequent pulse surveys. These pulse surveys would take no longer than five minutes for employees to complete. The benefit is they would probe on challenges, changes, feedback and where employees are at in terms of satisfaction and motivation.
Originally published at https://www.forbes.com. Learn more about me here!