When to give feedback: Periodic or ongoing?

Implementing an effective performance feedback policy is a great way to retain good employees—and when it comes to staffing, retention of the best is, of course, one of the primary goals. And one of the key considerations regarding your policy: when should feedback be provided?

Complicating the issue: an employer may have multiple purposes in mind when providing feedback. And each purpose might differ in its requirements as to timing.

What are some of those purposes? Certainly it’s important to provide an overall assessment of an employee’s performance. But, for employers, the reasoning goes much deeper, in ways more focused. Among other things, an employer might use feedback to:

• Enhance communication with the employee

• Inform the employee about goals and targets

• Identify areas where additional training might be helpful

• Highlight problems so that they can be fixed

• Identify successes

• Gauge whether the employee has adapted to internal changes in the workplace

• Measure personal accountability by reviewing progress and responsiveness

• Identify opportunities for promotion and advancement

• Motivate the employee

  
  

And, of course, the ultimate challenge is to ensure that these objectives are tied to: employee retention.

Generally speaking, in terms of timing there are two broad categories of feedback policies: periodic review and ongoing feedback.

Periodic review is what might be thought of as “classic” feedback: the formal performance review, generally provided annually, quarterly, or “as needed.”

Ongoing feedback, in contrast, is less structured, more off-the-cuff; when the time is right, or when an issue arises, the idea is to address it right away. Plain and simple; continuous evaluation of job performance—immersing both managers and employees in a discussion on the present rather than the past.

Enhancing effective communication, for example, is perhaps best achieved by the “ongoing feedback” model; opportunities for promotion and advancement, on the other hand, might be more effectively addressed on an annualized basis.

Many of the other purposes fall somewhere in-between. Goals and targets shouldn’t be adjusted every day, for example, but once a year may not be often enough. Certain types of training may require immediate action, while others might be less urgent.

The key element of a good feedback policy may just be flexibility. The best policy may be not a policy cut in stone but a policy that can be adjusted as necessary.

How can you achieve the desired flexibility? Well, the ongoing feedback model requires that relevant information be regularly gathered—so a flexible policy should encourage managers to record their observations and evaluations as they happen (in real-time).

That way, a thorough record is maintained and always available, to be drawn on consistently (if ongoing feedback is the optimal means of achieving a particular objective) or intermittently (if periodic review is sufficient).

Employees like feedback—particularly when it’s meaningful AND consistent. A flexible policy means you’ll be able to tweak methodology to guarantee that messages are delivered at the best time and in the best format possible. Employees will be well-informed and up-to-date and retention rates will rise.

Nicole Campbell

Director of Staffing

LinkedIn