by Carrie Ricketts

Created on: July 06, 2009

The importance of providing feedback to employees is critical if you want to have a organization that employees successful teams of people. Employees expect to be provided with honest, timely, and constructive feedback. Otherwise, how can they effectively do their job and become successful.

Why the need for honesty? If employees are not given the honest truth about how the organization sees their performance, you can't expect them to rise to the top and be successful. With honesty, comes the need to be constructive with your criticisms. Don't pick on personal things, such as the way someone dresses ( unless it is below company standards) or the way someone where's their hair. You should be focusing on the employees performance on the job. Remember to include what they do well, what items they need to work on and what is not working at all. If you give all negative feedback, the employee is likely to take it personal.

Why the need for timeliness? Employees should know everyday how they are performing so that during an annual performance review, there are no surprises. Employees need to be given the chance to improve their performance during the year, this will not only benefit them, but also benefit the organization. An employee does not want to be guessing if they are doing a good job or not. An employee who receives regular feedback is a happy employee, someone who feels good about themselves and the organization they work for.

Highly successful teams in organizations have managers who regularly communicate to their employees and let them know how they are doing, they provide objectives for each employee to meet and recognize them for achieving those objectives. They also make sure that the objectives they give their employees match the organizational objectives, and that they are achievable objectives. Employees want to be challenged, but they need to know that the goals are realistic, and not impossible to achieve. They want a reward for achieving, and that does not always have to be monetary, it could be as simple as a thank you"! If more managers paid attention and provided real honest, timely, and constructive feedback organizations would see the results. Those managers who did provide regular feedback would also have loyal and happy employees. I believe that is something that is missing from many organizations today. Managers don't want to have conflict and therefore don't provide any kind of feedback. A happy employee is a productive employee.

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