This is one of the oldest HR processes – giving Feedback which they get done through the managers / supervisors. But this still is a challenge.
Here are some facts based on an HBR paper ‘Feedback Isn’t Enough to Help Your Employees Grow – Peter Bregman and Howie Jacobson’:
Employees were leaving at alarming rate
They would say ‘It’s easier to talk to a head-hunter about my career than my own Manager.’
Company spent more than 1 million dollars on training the managers on performance evaluation
But there was little change even after 2 years. And we have heard of 360 degrees feedback also – has that been working well in your organization?
Giving and receiving feedback is an art. If I am at the receiving end, even I need to be trained – and some organizations might have missed on this point.
One needs to go bit deep – what is the purpose of feedback?
Simply – to enhance the performance. The challenge is that it gets linked with the rewards and there are bell curves to be maintained. Poor bosses! The outcome of performance appraisals is a PDP or PIP (personal development plan / personal improvement plan). In the ideal world – do not look for the weaknesses and attempt to improve those, rather look for the strengths and exploit those. You will actually save a lot from not producing those PDPs / PIPs!
The paper says ‘telling people they are missing the mark is not the same as helping them hit the mark’ – but does the boss has time to do this – he/ she is busy looking at his/ her own mark!
It will boil down to enhancing/ improving communication skills – giving and receiving feedback.
That a person missed the mark, may not be necessarily due to lack of competence, but perhaps he/ she did not understand the mark itself. The big question ‘what’s in it for me?’ – not understood correctly.
This is where Organizational Resilience puts so much stress on the VMV (vision, mission, values), goals, objectives, and purpose of the organization. Need is not to set these, but to make all employees understand these. Only then they will be able to play their role to achieve these – which means they would have achieved their targets and providing feedback would be piece of cake – along with healthy pay-outs.
The HBR paper suggests following four steps for building a culture of high performance:
Shift from critic to ally
Empathize
Express confidence
Ask permission
Identify an energizing outcome
Discover a hidden opportunity
Create a level 10 plan
The company in the case worked on these steps and the results were outstanding:
Unwanted turnover went down to 3%
Performance review completion went from 50% to 90%
This continued for over 15 years
The magic – employees and managers started engaging in positive, productive, performance -enhancing conversations!
Someone has mentioned in a book not to use 3 C's – criticize, complain, and condemn!
Organizational Resilience talks of 3 C's as DO – collaborate, communicate, and commit (to the common cause).
A Risk Managing, Learning, and Continually Improving organization is a Resilient Organization! Organizational Resilience is a journey of transformation – it will need dedicated resources – time, money, and effort!
We started with an HR process and are ending with Organizational Resilience – surprising? Not if one understands the concept of Organizational Resilience.
This is what Steve Jobs said supposedly - “My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better”. This was his way of building resilient people and resilient people make resilient organizations – hence the need is to work on people.
To understand more, please click on this link to join our Certification Course on CERTIFIED ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE SPECIALIST & IMPLEMENTER - ISO 22316:2017.