Enhance Workplace Communication- Best Methods for Providing Feedback to Colleagues In 2023

As remote work grows, the team spirit suffers! The lack of effective means to provide feedback and workplace communication makes relationships transactional. Hence, feedback for colleagues becomes even more critical for organizations of all sizes than ever before. 

By asking the employees to examine their colleagues’ work, you can help boost workplace engagement as they learn from each other in a safe and constructive environment. 

Read ahead to know why feedback for colleagues is important today and discover the best practices to maximize its potential.

Why is feedback for colleagues essential?

Employees seek more than just performance evaluations. According to recent statistics, over 65% of employees desire more feedback, and nearly 98% of workers get disengaged when they get little to no feedback. As per Forbes, over 89% of HR leaders say that ongoing coworker feedback and check-ins are essential for successful outcomes.

Effective feedback for colleagues can help your employees be more engaged with your organization’s mission and values, foster better communication, build solid relationships, and break down silos. As a result of this, you can retain top talent and elevate your employer brand. When given constructively, feedback for coworkers can help identify and remove hindrances in achieving goals and targets and enable ongoing development.

With an established colleague feedback loop in place, your employee can-

• identify each other’s strengths and weaknesses,
• set goals for improvement,
• gain new perspectives and insights about their work that they might not gain from the managers or supervisors,
• improve their problem-solving abilities, and
• foster a culture of openness, trust, and mutual support.

As a result, you can help boost their productivity and build a positive workplace culture of effective collaboration, understanding, and efficiency.

Reduce Feedback Bias

In addition to significantly contributing to a healthy workforce, feedback for colleagues can further help you enhance your performance review process. That is because senior authorities and coworkers see the same employee in a different light, and many aspects of the employees remain outside the managers’ purview.

Since people spend more time with their colleagues and not their managers, they tend to be more open and honest in their conversations with their coworkers. Thus, colleagues have better knowledge of the employees’ working style and professional behavior and are more likely to give unbiased feedback.  

By implementing feedback for colleagues, you can gain deeper insights into your employees, avoid feedback bias, and draw a more comprehensive picture of your employees’ performance. 

What are the best practices for implementing colleague feedback?

Encouraging effective colleague feedback can be challenging as there are various things to consider for its successful implementation. Here are some of the best practices to allow your colleague feedback loop to thrive and help you improve workplace communication:

• Educate your Employees

You must educate your employees on how to provide effective feedback and ensure that they understand the information they are offering. Take time to show them how the feedback loop works and why they need to share their suggestions and opinions with colleagues. 

You also need to educate your employees on how giving peer feedback can help identify areas of improvement and devise data-driven action plans to make corrective decisions.

• Go Anonymous

Anonymous feedback for colleagues can help prevent conflicts and enable the discussion of sensitive topics. 

Amber, the conversational AI chatbot from inFeedo, ensures employees are comfortable giving honest, unbiased, and unfiltered feedback without fearing negative consequences or judgment. Leverage Amber’s anonymous survey platform that enables your employees to share anonymous feedback. 

• Eliminate the Pressure

Remember, feedback for coworkers is an informal way to help your team improve and foster a learning culture. It should never be linked to compensation. If your employees feel that getting a bunch of negative feedback will affect their annual salaries, they will be fearful while providing information.

• Be Frequent

Do not wait for the pre-scheduled performance appraisals to nudge your employees for colleague feedback. You should be more often and ask for regular feedback, whether after reaching a particular milestone or even in the middle of a big project. It will help you resolve issues quickly before they worsen.

Progressive HR leaders often conduct pulse surveys to gauge employee sentiment. These surveys have carefully crafted questions to measure team effectiveness and understand employees' sentiments about their colleagues. It's all about getting valuable insights and understanding the pulse of the team!

• Leverage 360-degree performance reviews.

Traditional performance reviews offer limited perspectives in the evaluation process and can be biased. Whereas 360-degree reviews are a great way to ensure a comprehensive assessment and gather feedback from all stakeholders, including feedback from colleagues and the employees an employee manages. 

Go beyond the traditional, top-down approach and adopt 360-degree review systems.

• Prioritize Constructive Feedback

People often provide feedback focusing on the negative aspects of their colleagues’ work and don’t recognize their efforts and achievements. This develops into a culture of criticism and blame-shifting. As per Harvard Business Review, over 92% of employees feel that if negative feedback is given appropriately, it can help them effectively improve their performance. 

You must ensure that your employees’ feedback contains both the positive and negative aspects of their colleagues’ work. Greater recognition of their efforts will lead to greater motivation and higher productivity. Make them understand that it is not about pointing fingers but finding solutions together. 

• Choose the Right Tech Stack

To enable employees to provide feedback for their colleagues, it's crucial to give them the means to share their thoughts. This is where technology plays a vital role. 

Research and compare the tools available in the market for every stage of the employee lifecycle. Consider factors like performance, cost, usability, analytics, AI-enabled and integration capabilities to understand if the tool meets your needs.

Tools to conduct employee engagement surveys, employee feedback, team effectiveness survey, and employee exit surveys are must-haves in any tech stack. They help you collect and analyze colleague feedback to identify areas of improvement and improve employee engagement.

What are the challenges employees face when giving feedback to their colleagues?

Colleague feedback, if not executed correctly, presents some challenges.

• It can be challenging to give honest and constructive feedback without hurting colleagues' feelings.
• Receiving negative feedback, especially when unexpected, can be difficult for many employees, who react emotionally or defensively to it.
• Employees can feel overwhelmed and confused by receiving inconsistent or conflicting feedback from different sources and can get unsure about which to prioritize.
• Preparing and delivering feedback can be stressful and time-consuming for employees when burdened with tight deadlines and heavy workloads.
• Feedback not aligned with organizational goals and expectations can be ineffective and counterproductive. 

How to help your employees be better at giving colleague feedback?

Following are certain things for your employees to remember while giving feedback to their colleagues-

• The feedback must be specific, provide context, and clearly list the particular project, behavior, positives, and improvement areas.
• It must not include hearsay as it can often be gossip and untrue. It must address the problem and not the person.
• The language must include passive voice and polite words to avoid offensive misinterpretations and convey the right meaning to the colleague. 
• It must objectively view an employee’s behavior and performance.
• The feedback must also suggest ways of improvement rather than simply ending after appreciating or pointing out the coworker's mistakes.
• Ensure ease-of-use. InFeedo’s KIOSK-friendly AI surveys enable scanning a QR code to initiate real-time feedback collection and make it seamless for employees no matter where they are.

• Instead of jumping to conclusions when a colleague makes a mistake or doesn’t seem to grasp a concept, it is vital to ask the right questions to dig deeper into the problem and understand the person’s behavior and mindset to provide the necessary guidance.
• The feedback must be timely and as close to the event/situation as possible. The feedback’s effectiveness will be reduced if the feedback is sent after too long. 

Book your demo today to learn more about how inFeedo’s actionable AI can help you improve workplace communication and foster a better team culture in your organization.