Giving Employees Feedback - Coursework Example

Giving Employees Feedback Executive Summary This is a research paper on organizational behavior and more specifically on giving employees feedback. The research paper is divided into two parts. The first part begins by introducing the topic of study and identifying five best practices for the behavior. In this part, the researcher has given various evidences and examples to support every practice. The first part of the paper also illustrates linkages of the behavior to individual performance improvement, improved morale, satisfaction and commitment as well as reduced turnover, quitting and deviance. The part, also discusses the practices chosen over others and the reason for the choice. In this part, the paper has also recommended the best single practice for giving employees feedback by evaluating its utility across situations and demonstrating its implications for other management areas. Part two is followed by a summary and conclusion. Part two of the paper is a field research on giving employees feedback. The researcher identifies two people who work in two different for-profit companies and went studies the way an Organizational Behavioral scientist would give employees feedback through interviews. Analysis of the results was later done and interpreted before the conclusions. PART 1 Introduction Giving employees’ feedback is a process whereby the manager gives his or her employees frequent helpful responses about their work, the results of their work, their contributions, and the effectiveness of the employees’ working relationships (Clayton & Hayes, 2004). An effective manager is skilled in giving both praise and criticism feedbacks. It is easier to give praise feedback employees and far more challenging and unpleasant to criticize employees. However, management requires a manager to occasionally address his employees on areas they need to improve (Clayton & Hayes, 2004). Hence, it is important for managers to learn how and when to give negative feedback to their employees. Giving feedback to employees gives them an observer’s insight on the progress of their performance and advice to solve possible problems. Although giving feedback is a delicate process, its value is helpful in identifying and solving issues (Clayton & Hayes, 2004). Some of the respondents include; supervisors, managers, peers, customers and measurement systems among others. Five Steps for Giving Productive Feedback 1. Create Safety: researchers have found out that people who receive feedback apply only 30% of it. If the employee receiving feedback is not comfortable with it, the feedback is likely to be unproductive (Roman & Boyce, 2001). It is important for managers to apply civility and safety into their feedback approaches before giving them to employees (Roman & Boyce, 2001). The manager should remain un-mean spirited for his or her feedback to be productive. The feedback should not be focused on making the employee feel bad or make him appear foolish in front of other employees. 2. Be Positive: it is important for the manager to give more positive feedback than negative feedback or both (Roman & Boyce, 2001). Positive feedback stimulates the reward centers of employees’ brains urging them to take a new direction. Negative feedback, on the other hand, sends a signal that there is need for adjustments which in response invites defensiveness. Despite this fact, one does not have to avoid negative or corrective feedback. It is as important as the positive feedback. What needs to be done is following the negative feed back with a suggested solution or outcome (Roman & Boyce, 2001). If the feedback is positive, it is important for the manager to show appreciation. An appreciative feedback adds sincerity to the constructive feedback (Roman & Boyce, 2001). For example a manager can say, “Julie, your handling of all processing work and Peter’s callbacks made for an efficient effort and portrayed good teamwork. Everything you did was accurate and in order. Thank you so much for helping out.” This initiative is a real value to the team. 3. Be specific: it is important for one to avoid ambiguous feedbacks because they are likely to be interpreted in more personal ways (Herzberg, 2008). For instance, managers should avoid statements like, “you need to be more talkative in meetings”. Instead, say something specific and positive pointed at the task accomplished. For instance, say something like “you are smart, I would like to see you participate actively in meetings by at least giving one opinion in every staff meeting.” As usual, people including employees of various organizations respond better to specific positive directions as compared to ambiguous and vague statements (Herzberg, 2008). 4. Be Immediate: one’s brain learns best when caught in action. It is important for managers to recommend or correct their employees immediately they realize an improvement or need for correct (Herzberg, 2008). If one waits for so long like three months to tell an employee that he or she needs to improve his performance, it might not be helpful. This employee might not grasp the required changes in order to take a different direction. This is far too ambiguous and relies on memory, which can be faulty (Herzberg, 2008). Any productive feedback will require frequent giving. This way, performance reviews will be a friendly discussion between the two parties involved. 5. Be tough but not mean: if there is need for negative feedback to an employee in an organization, as a manager, start by asking the employee’s perspective on the situation. Do not offend him or her by saying how stupid his or her actions were even though they were. Next, give the employee a specific, forward-moving type of feedback (Robbins, 2009). Ask him or her whether he understands everything expected, and then remind him that he is being graded and that your role there is to assist him or her succeed. Employees have a habit of becoming what they are encouraged to be by their managers and not what they are nagged to be. It is important that managers or whoever giving feedback to employees show concern incase of negative feedback situations. Tones of concern communicate a sense of importance and care while providing the appropriate level of sincerity attached to the message (Robbins, 2009). It is important for managers to remember that tones portraying anger, disappointment, frustration and sarcasm tend to color the language of the message and in turn attempts at negative feedback into criticism. The content of the message is also likely to get lost to harshness and the noise from the manager or the person giving the feedback. By the end of the exercise, the employee will not improve in the required area because he or she has gotten the message or received it with a bad motive. Managers and feedback providers need to know that the aim of negative feedback is to create awareness, which can bring about correction and improvement in the employee’s performance. Negative feedback given in unhelpful manner without a language and tone of concern defeats its purpose (Robbins, 2009). For example, the manager calls the employee and begins by saying, “Gordon I’d like us to talk about project X. What do you think has been going on well and what has not been going on well?” This introduction gives the employee a heads up about the topic and lets him know that you as the manager would like to hear balanced views, i.e. both the good and bad news. The manager or feedback giver can interrupt and disagree from time to time to ensure Gordon is not giving only good news. This turns out to be a coaching conversation where you as the manager finds out what Gordon think about project X and this gives you real valuable information on how to respond. Gordon is likely to see the problem and as the manager, you pick up on and clarify what he has said. Even if Gordon is oblivious of the situation, it is important for the manager to listen to him first as this will make the conversation more adversarial and alert Gordon to listen carefully and promptly. The importance of the above practices over others The above practices have been chosen over others because giving employees’ feedback is vital for improving organizational performance. Failure giving feedback is like walking blind and accidentally you reach your destination (Gilbreath & Harris, 2002). You might as well wander in darkness without reaching your destination. The above practices are timely and effective, and this is a critical component of a successful performance management program and is used in conjunction with setting performance goals. Effective feedback given to employees improves their performance (Gilbreath & Harris, 2002). Employees’ need to know what they are doing, that which is working and that which is not working in a timely manner. The practices discuss the manner on which the feedback should be given to employees to yield positive results. The feedback should be expressed in a positive manner because people respond better to information presented in a positive way. The practices have explained that the feedback should be accurate, complete and factual (Hyten, 2002). For instance, the practices explain how the feedback should be reinforced effectively; what the employees did right and identify areas that need improvement in future. The practices have illustrated how effective feedback will improve the performance management program, individuals and team performance to make organizations more effective (Hyten, 2002). Implementation of effective feedback processes to employees will assist them work un-blindly to successfully reach their destinations. The Single Best Practice The single best practice for giving employees’ feedback is ensuring positive interactions outnumber negative interactions. The ratio can be 5:1 for the feedback to be effective (Robbins, 2004). This is because people like responding strongly to negative feedback as compared to positive feedback. This suggestion implies that negative feedback can have a significant adverse effect on an employee’s welfare, which in turn affects his or her productivity (Moorhead & Griffin, 1995). Hence, managers and other feedback givers need to be cautious before criticizing their employees. For instance, an employee might write a first draft of a written document, and the manager hurriedly suggests minor revisions even if the draft was generally good. In this case, manager ought to have clearly communicated that the suggested revision is a mere suggestion from a second perspective, and that he is not criticizing the performance of the employee. Employers need to remember that shaming an employee will have a substantial negative effect on the business or organization (Moorhead & Griffin, 1995). PART 2 Introduction In this part, I identified two people who work in two different for-profit companies and interviewed them on giving employees feedback. The two people are Louis and Rodgers. My objective was to compare and contrast these two organizations and learn what they teach about OB principles in real work life. Some of the questions posed to the employees include; how are people the same and how are people different in their behavior in the workplace? Are there universal ways in which people are the same? In what ways they find people different? How does this affect the workplace? What are some techniques or practices in their organizations that increase employee motivation? What decreases employee motivation in their workplace? How they know people in their work place are stressed? How do they know they are stressed? What makes a great team? Whether they have worked on a great team? If yes, what was it like? What makes an organization successful? Why? What gets in the way of organizational success? What is the structure of their organization? How they would describe their organization’s culture? And how they think they got those cultures? Results Both Louis and Rodgers affirmed that giving employee feedback is the most challenging task to both the manager who gives and the employee who is given. According to Louis who is the manager of his company, managers hate giving feedback because their worry is the way the employee will react to it. The employee may get angry, cry or even abuse the manager. According to Louis, employees sometimes get super defensive and direct the blame to the manager. Not knowing what to say is yet another thing, which makes it hard for managers to give employees’ feedback. Sometimes managers have presumptions that a particular employee has a bad attitude; hence, the situation is likely to grow from bad to worse. So according to Louis who is the manager, with all that running in his head decides that it is not a big deal and does away with it. Louis adds that if the person is really a good person or employee will figure out the mistake and stop it. Louis argues that this makes him feel justified and self righteous about not giving feedback to employees. Rodgers, on the other hand, an employee in his company argued that employees are different. There are those who will respond positively to feedbacks whereas others will respond negatively regardless of whether the feedback is positive or negative. According to Rodgers, some employees react emotively while others act calmly to feedbacks. He goes further to give an example of his colleague who slapped his manager because the manager wanted him to correct a thing or two to raise his performance. Rodgers explained that some of the motivational practices practiced in their company include monetary rewards and holidays for top performers. Through the motivations, those who lag behind are challenged to pull their socks so that they can be rewarded next time. What I learnt from the Louis and Rodger’s organization is that Louis’s organization avoids giving employees feedback while Rodgers’ organization gives employees’ feedback following the best practices. The applications of OB practices in organizations and more especially giving employees’ feedback highly depend on the contribution put in by the manager or whoever responsible for giving employee feedback. Conclusion I found out that interviewing is the best tool for collecting data because of the face to face interaction where the interviewer and interviewee exchange ideas until the interviewer is satisfied. I now think differently about organizational behavior and how data are collected because the data can be biased by the interviewer. References Clayton, M. C. & Hayes, L. (2004). Using Performance Feedback to Increase the Billable Hours of Social Workers: A Multiple Baseline Evaluation, Different Effects of Individual and Small Group Monetary Incentives on High Performance. The Behavior Analyst Today, 3(1), 88–103. comments, called-out Gilbreath, N. & Harris, M. (2002). Performance-Based Pay in the Workplace: Magic Potion or Malevolent Poison? The Behavior Analyst Today, 3(3), 311–316. Herzberg, F. (2008). One more time: How do you motivate employees? Harvard Business Review, 9 (7), 52-62. Hyten, J. (2002). On the Identity Crisis in OBM. The Behavior Analyst Today, 3(3), 301–315. Moorhead, G. & Griffin, R. W. (1995). Organizational behavior: Managing people and organizations (5th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Roman, H.R. & Boyce, T.E. (2001). Institutionalizing Behavior-Based Safety: Theories, Concepts, and Practical Suggestions. The Behavior Analyst Today, 3(1), 76–82. Robbins, S. P. (2009). Organizational behaviour. Cape Town: Pearson. Robbins, S. P. (2004). Organizational Behavior - Concepts, Controversies, Applications. 4th ed. New York: Prentice Hall. Read More