Geschreven door Jan-Hendrik Vervelde | February 11, 2016
The debate re-emerged at the end of last year: are performance and assessment reviews still necessary in this day and age? Generation Y prefers to receive feedback more often and on short term. This poses a problem for managers, because calling someone out on their behaviour directly is easier said than done.
It is old-fashioned to have one or two performance reviews a year, since it does not fit the dynamic market environment that companies currently operate in, according to PWC partner and HR advisor Tommes Krullaars in FD (Dutch financial newspaper). The digitally capable generation Y (from 1980 onwards) in particular, tends to prefer feedback in the work place.
Adjusting behaviour permanently
Dutch research has shown that direct feedback is a big challenge for many managers. Even though they think one in six employees is performing inadequately, they admit that they do too little to change it. Not even a fifth of the interviewed managers are successful in adjusting non-effective behaviour permanently. At the same time, 40% thinks that they should, in fact, call out their employees, colleagues or manager more. Subsequently, almost as many of them expect more feedback from their own manager. Concerning their colleagues, 60% thinks they should give more feedback to their employees.
No time for feedback
In other words: managers also agree with the need to provide more direct feedback, but even if they are doing so already, they see too little effect. The longstanding management problem rears its ugly head: there’s no time. However, researcher Gytha Heins has posed a revenue decline of 12,5% and a cost increase of 16% because of employees' malfunctioning. One would think that this should be enough reason to invest in more feedback, although it should be of good quality as well.
Training effective feedback
The truth of the matter is, a feedback culture causes more harm when an organisation promotes this without it going hand in hand with actual effective feedback. That’s why it’s essential to train managers and employees in giving feedback with this change. This does not need to be radical: picking up an interactive app to practice daily, can get everyone at the same level in a short amount of time.
What’s feedback like in your organisation? Do you always have the guts to give feedback to colleagues and employees? Share your reaction with us. Do you want to know more about our feedback training? See below.