According to a new study released by Gallup, employees who receive regular feedback are more engaged. In addition, the best employee feedback is both timely and relevant. As Gallup shows, good feedback is essential to creating a high-performance workforce.

While these results may not seem earth-shattering, they highlight the importance of investing in the infrastructure and training needed to improve employee evaluation policies and procedures. Gallup’s study shows that the future workforce needs timely, relevant, and continuous feedback. Annual or even quarterly review systems don’t support team members to succeed.

According to Gallup, “when employees strongly agree they received “meaningful feedback” in the past week, they are almost four times more likely than other employees to be engaged.” One crucial qualifier here is the definition of “meaningful” feedback. Even if we can all agree that continuous, timely feedback is essential to employee engagement – we must still focus on training managers to provide good, vital feedback that helps employees improve and feeds their desire to succeed at work.

Feedback is information provided to another person to help them grow and improve. Here are a few tips on how to think about and provide meaningful feedback at work:

• The most helpful feedback is focused on the employee and their work. Rather than generalities, specific input related to recent work and program goals is most effective.
• Focus on the future. Rather than pointing out mistakes, good managers motivate performance improvements by helping employees identify how they can do better next time.
• Notice that feedback intends to help, not hurt others.
• Giving and receiving feedback is one of the essential skills to master in interpersonal relations.
• Feedback is your friend; through feedback, we see ourselves as others see us.
• It is also through feedback that other people know how we see them.
• Appropriate feedback can be the spark that inspires crucial personal change in the lives of co-workers and loved ones.
• Team members are an essential source of feedback to one another.

To improve your feedback – think of ways to increase how often you provide it, better target it to specific employees and work goals, and make it future-leaning. Think of yourself as a coach and mentor when providing continuous feedback. How can you motivate employees by focusing on big and small wins, reminding them of the short and long-term goals they are essential to achieving, and helping them achieve even better results?

At Black Diamond Leadership, we believe in giving and receiving feedback. Our leadership training program helps leaders and peers develop the art of giving and receiving feedback. Another essential component in effective feedback is learning to engage in coaching conversations. Contact us today to learn more about leadership and team development programs that can be implemented at your organization.

Read the full article: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/357764/fast-feedback-fuels-performance.aspx