How Can You Use Employee Feedback to Improve Your Work Culture‍

This article explains how you can use employee feedback to improve your work culture

A positive workplace culture results in happier employees and a more productive company. So companies must uphold a healthy work culture.

Providing employee feedback can help you achieve this. Feedback to employees helps your staff understand what you expect from them. This feedback is critical to improving employees’ skills.

Do note that proper feedback is more than just a nice compliment or anger-driven rant. It should be systematic, ongoing feedback that helps build employees’ skills.

You should gather feedback from your employees as well. This will give you perspective on your workplace’s morale. You can refine your management and administrative systems through both types of employee feedback.

A culture of feedback can foster productive discussions with your employees. This can result in better employee experience and company growth. Here’s how you can use employee feedback to improve your work culture.

For instance, employees report Dylan Mills for harassment, as shown above. Make sure you get all sides to the story before making any conclusions.

For modern remote teams, you may need to consider the cultural differences between your co-workers. For example, derogatory for some team members may be everyday communication for other staff.

Many conflicts between two parties may be due to miscommunication, misunderstanding, or something being lost in translation. That doesn’t mean you’ll let an unsafe work environment thrive. Communicate with the offending employee and work together towards finding a permanent solution.

Creating a productive work culture means pruning out issues that drag productivity. So it’s essential to provide employee feedback to resolve these workplace conflicts.

2. Improved Employee Engagement

Solving a puzzle yourself is much more engaging than being told where the pieces go. The same idea applies to work. Let your employees exercise and refine their skills to keep them engaged in the workspace.

Humans have a “desire to become the most that one can be,” as stated in the top section of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. If that need isn’t met, your workers will become unmotivated and dissatisfied with their work.

Combat low employee engagement by providing constructive feedback to your remote employees and use employee development plan as a tool. This meets their need for self-improvement. It also makes them feel vital to the workplace. As a result, you’ll be appealing to their sense of purpose. They will feel like they’re improving themselves and contributing to moving the company forward.

On the other hand, zero feedback from management damages employee engagement. It isn’t helpful to employee wellness either. Be sure to conduct employee engagement surveys to gauge engagement and morale among your staff.

As a project manager, you need to listen to your employees. Have productive, scheduled 1:1 conversations with them.

The act alone of listening to your employees will make them feel valued as the company’s workforce.

If your team is spread across multiple time zones, you may need to move around the employee schedule and make slight compromises once in a while to schedule one-on-one discussions. It may sound like too much work, but isn’t it worth it if it means happier employees and better performance of your business?

Employee engagement creates a workplace culture that’s goal-oriented and innovative. Your company will see better quarterly numbers when you engage your employees. Therefore, all the efforts and compromises going towards sharing feedback to enhance your work culture is worth it.

3. Aids in Professional Development

Employees don’t just grind out work to put food on the table. They seek professional growth from work experience.

Employee feedback can maximize the time employees spend with your organization. This makes your labor costs more efficient. Remember, it’s always quality time over quantity time.

An effective way to help employees achieve their professional development is by setting SMART goals for your organization. This stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

Coming together with your employees to set, discuss, and share feedback continuously as you work towards achieving these goals will help equip them with valuable professional skills. For starters, it enhances collaboration.

A SMART goal could be to produce ten social media posts weekly as part of your SaaS marketing plan. Or, conduct two more demos for the month for the sales department. The good thing about these goals is that you can measure them, allowing you to assess any improvement.

Give appropriate feedback based on an employee’s SMART goal performance. Providing effective feedback to your employees sharpens them for the business world. They will acquire hard and soft skills from the feedback you give them. As a result, your company will benefit from the increased efficiency of the employee.

4. Improves Productivity

Being busy does not equal being productive. Your remote employees may be working overtime with an optimistic work ethic. That doesn’t mean they’re being productive.

Effective employee feedback optimizes employees’ workflows. A smoother workflow is less clunky and more efficient.

Some employees may fail to hit set targets because they haven’t mastered the workflows. In that case, you need to provide regular feedback on what they might be doing wrong or how to boost their performance. Slowly give them tips. Don’t overwhelm them with loads of tips all at once. Give them a chance to apply a few tips until it becomes natural to them.

Once they improve their workflows, you may now provide additional tips for their arsenal. This gradual process will refine their skills over time.

By optimizing the workflow of your employees, you improve their performance and productivity. That means better results for your business.

5. Reinforces Positive Behavior

Corporate proceedings require a professional approach to feedback. This forces an employee to listen through critical feedback, resisting an urge to be defensive. Continuous performance reviews can teach an employee to listen first and talk later.

A listen-first-talk-later approach is an essential human value. It teaches people to be compassionate, turning them into better people overall. Honest feedback from the performance review also has upsides to an employee’s behavior. When employees receive positive feedback, they understand what’s expected of them.

This growth will mitigate any negative behavior they initially had.

Additionally, your employees will feel valued for their positive work ethic. Take note of their improvement over time and praise them for it.

Reinforcing positive behavior builds a better work culture—one that’s open, empathetic, and safe to work in. Reinforcing positive behavior also builds healthy work habits among workers, such as collaboration and idea-sharing.

Wrapping up

Work culture is the root of different employee ethics, behaviors, and personalities. Morale and productivity thrive in a workplace that has a positive work culture. Employee feedback can help achieve a better work culture. Here’s how:

An area where employee feedback helps is conflict resolution. The correct feedback resolves friction between two internal parties. Feedback is also the backbone for employee engagement, giving workers a sense of purpose.

Employee feedback equips employees with the necessary workplace skills. This feedback also optimizes employee performance, making them more productive.

Lastly, employee feedback reinforces positive behavior. Maintain a feedback culture in your workplace to ensure thriving work ethics. This creates a safer, conducive space to work in. Follow this guide so you can achieve better morale and lower turnover rates.

Author Bio

Nico is the founder of Crunch Marketing. The company works with enterprise SaaS clients, helping them scale lead generation globally across EMEA, APAC, and other regions.