The HR Executive’s Guide to Building a Feedback Culture

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Introduction

Making the Move to Continuous Performance Management

Main Feedback Types

How BetterWorks Supports Your Feedback Culture

Contents

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The HR Executive’s Guide to Building a Feedback Culture

Rethinking performance management is top of mind for many of today’s HR leaders. After all, you’re not only responsible for shaping your company’s overall culture, but also helping your people develop, perform at their best and genuinely want to come to work every day.

Taking on this multitude of responsibilities can be daunting, especially in the age of websites like Glassdoor where even one negative review can impact hiring and onboarding. Your employees want to feel empowered, which means they want to have a voice—and be heard—within their own organization. To do this, HR leaders are beginning to realize they should become more proactive, instead of just reactive, in helping their employees succeed.

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But if current methods aren’t working, what are top companies turning to instead of traditional performance management?

Turns out, 1 in 3 companies are moving to a new process called continuous performance management4, which is rooted in a culture where managers and employees have frequent coaching conversations, and employees exchange lightweight, ongoing feedback.

We created this whitepaper to help you design the most effective feedback culture for your company: treat it as your go-to guide for learning everything you need to know about feedback. Read through the many benefits of creating a feedback culture, then determine which feedback types are right for your organization and how the BetterWorks platform can help you significantly ease the process.

Unfortunately, many of today’s leaders tend to turn to ineffective performance management processes when trying to be more proactive, focusing primarily on methods of annual ratings and reviews. But these processes just don’t seem to be cutting it:

70% of companies are moving towards a different performance

management model3

Nearly

of organizations believe their current process for managing performance is

worth the time2

Only

6% 1/3 of U.S. workers are

engaged in their jobs1

Less than

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Making the Move to Continuous Performance Management

An increasing number of companies are replacing their traditional performance management processes with frequent, informal check-ins, including Adobe, Microsoft, IBM, Deloitte, Accenture, PwC, Gap and General Electric5. Bersin of Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP, estimates about 70% of multinational companies are moving toward this model.

What’s the hype about? Especially as a leader who wants to understand how your employees are working and developing, the benefits of a continuous performance process are endless. Not only do your people feel more engaged at work, but the data you get from their feedback can be extremely beneficial when designing your company’s culture.

Just think about everything you’ve wanted to know about your employees: How is each department performing? What kinds of programs will help my people develop? What do they find valuable—and not valuable—in how the company functions? How are they embodying the company’s values?

All of these questions are answered when your employees report their feedback in real time: immediately, you have access to data on patterns that arise on different teams so you can design specific programs that will better cater to your employees. Additionally, you can discover common themes from conversations to gain insights into what they’re thinking and how they’re embodying your company’s values.

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How To Do Feedback Right

When your performance process is connected in these ways, you’re developing a more holistic, data-driven approach to feedback that moves your company towards continuous performance management.

There are four main components to an effective continuous performance management process, all of which should be seamlessly connected with each other: goals/OKRs, check-ins/conversations, peer/360 feedback and performance reviews. Employees should use their goals to inform check-ins and peer feedback, while managers should use their reports’ goals and peer feedback to inform check-ins and performance reviews.

Goals/OKRs

Check-Ins/Conversations

360/Peer Feedback

Performance Reviews

Q4Q3

Q1

Q2

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Employees want feedback related to the work they’re doing and the progress they’re making on current goals. A downside to only doing annual performance reviews is that it’s one meeting per year. Because priorities tend to shift throughout the year, employees need a way to give and receive feedback in a more timely fashion, so it’s relevant to what they’re working on.

Feedback shouldn’t be a one-way street. When managers are the only ones giving feedback to their direct reports, employees within the company can feel like their voices aren’t being heard. With two-way feedback, you get to hear from and contribute to everyone in the company. This way, everyone—even managers—has the opportunity to develop.

By 2020, nearly half of the U.S. workforce will be millennials7, 42% of which want weekly feedback on their performance8. Especially as technology only becomes more prevalent in the workplace, there should be a way for feedback to occur continuously and easily—without the hassle of endless paperwork and dreaded, hours-long conversations.

According to Paul D. Hamerman and Claire Schooley of Forrester Research, “Once-a-year or every six-months feedback is not frequent enough to meet the ever-changing pace of business.” In fact, increasing the frequency of informal performance conversations can improve employee performance by up to 12%6.

Frequent

Lightweight

Two-way

Relevant

To begin the transition, get your company to understand how to give and receive feedback in the best way. Feedback should be:

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Main Feedback Types

Now that you’ve seen why implementing a culture of feedback is important, the challenge now is actually executing. You might be thinking: what types of feedback are right for my company? Is there a cadence I should be following? What kinds of questions should my employees be asking?

While we believe there are unique benefits to every feedback type, it’s up to you to decide what’s right for your company’s culture by understanding and evaluating the different kinds of feedback you can implement.

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Manager - Employee Check-Ins/Conversations

It’s important that your managers and their direct reports are consistently having conversations with each other, especially so your managers learn how to become better coaches and your employees feel like they’re developing and being valued at work.

Feedback between managers and employees can occur in many ways, but we’ve narrowed it down to four primary conversation types:

Type Recommended Cadence

Use Case Example Question

Start, stop,

continue

Quarterly To provide both employees and

managers with feedback and

coaching on what they’re doing

well and how they can improve

What should you start, stop

and continue doing to be

more successful?

Goal setting and

reflection

Quarterly To discuss goals for the coming

quarter, and how to align them

with the organization’s priorities

To discuss top priorities for the

upcoming quarter and reflect

on the previous quarter’s

performance

What goals did you

accomplish over the last

quarter and what goals

will you work towards this

quarter?

Ongoing progress

updates

Weekly

or bi-weekly

Informal check-ins to discuss

real time progress updates

Where are you currently

encountering obstacles?

Career growth Annually/

bi-annually

Discussing the employee’s long

term career goals and creating

a plan to help them develop

necessary skills

How can I help you grow in

your career and help you

towards your career goals?

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360/Peer Feedback

In addition to check-ins between managers and their reports, the next important type of feedback is 360-degree, or peer-to-peer, feedback.

There are two types of peer feedback—HR-scheduled and ad hoc. Each type can have different viewability settings (manager only, employee only or both manager and employee) based on what kind of feedback is being given. While HR-scheduled feedback is used primarily to inform manager-employee conversations, ad hoc peer feedback occurs in real-time and contributes directly to the development of an employee.

Type Recommended Cadence

Use Case Example Question

HR Scheduled Quarterly Supports manager-employee

conversations on competencies

and values that need to be

feedback-informed

How has Steve demonstrated

leadership and how can he

improve?

Ad Hoc In real time,

throughout the

year

Supports ongoing peer-to-peer

recognition and unprompted

constructive feedback

Steve just demonstrated

leadership in today’s

meeting by...

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Performance Reviews

There’s a lot of talk about the role of annual performance reviews, but there’s no question that only doing reviews, without any other type of feedback, isn’t enough. If you choose to continue doing performance reviews, try to avoid the common pitfalls of ratings and review biases.

The annual performance review is a formal conversation between managers and employees about the employee’s career path and personal development. The conversation should take into account evaluations and feedback the employee received throughout the year so the manager can make an informed decision on ratings, career and compensation adjustments.

Studies suggest that “more than half of a given performance rating has to do with the traits of the person conducting the evaluation, not the person being rated9.” However, with a connected approach to continuous performance management, managers can better inform performance reviews by using data from previous check-ins and evaluations. By informing reviews with this data, it also makes it easier for managers to rate their employees’ individual competencies, such as leadership skills or cross-functional collaboration, to supplement their compensation decisions.

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How BetterWorks Supports Your Feedback Culture

Especially as your company scales, it can become increasingly difficult to maintain an effective culture of feedback without a platform that seamlessly connects the aspects of the continuous performance management process. BetterWorks eases the process by making it:

Automated With automated feedback program reminders, you don’t have to waste time facilitating every conversation and reminder.

Configurable Customize our platform to fit your organization’s specific needs, including your desired cadence and feedback types.

Lightweight Our simple user interface allows employees to give, receive and record feedback easily and frequently.

Goals Module

Feedback ModuleConversations Module

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Some of our biggest customers are successfully using BetterWorks to facilitate their unique continuous performance management processes. No matter what your cadence is for each component of the process, our platform can support your needs. For instance, the following table shows the different performance processes of three of our customers:

# of employees <500 5,000-10,000 10,000+

Goals/OKRs:

Conversations:

Peer Feedback:

Performance Review:

Quarterly

Quarterly

N/A

Annually & Integrated with HRIS

Quarterly

Quarterly

Ad hoc

Annually

Quarterly

Monthly

Ad hoc

Annually in Workday

As your company makes the transition to continuous performance management, use this paper as a resource to developing the most effective culture of feedback within your organization.

For more information about BetterWorks, go to www.betterworks.com

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http://www.gallup.com/poll/181289/majority-employees-not-engaged-

despite-gains-2014.aspx

http://marketing.bersin.com/deloitte-global-human-capital-

trends-2014.html

https://hbr.org/2016/10/the-performance-management-revolution

https://hbr.org/2016/10/the-performance-management-revolution

https://blog.betterworks.com/pm-watch-5-trendsetters-leveling-

performance-conversation/

https://www.cebglobal.com/blogs/corporate-hr-removing-

performance-ratings-is-unlikely-to-improve-performance/?business_

line=human-resources

https://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/executive-development/custom-

programs/~/media/DF1C11C056874DDA8097271A1ED48662.ashx

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150217006050/en/

Generations-Workplace-National-Study-Reveals-Surprising-Realities#.

VW92QZNVikp

http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-push-against-

performance-reviews

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BetterWorks provides continuous performance management to help employees

easily set goals and give ongoing feedback. It seamlessly connects the four aspects

of a performance process – goals, check-in conversations, peer feedback and

reviews – to help AOL, BMW, Kroger, GoPro, Schneider Electric and more improve

performance and engagement. Learn more at www.BetterWorks.com

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