Welcome back to Giving Helpful Feedback and the Seven Basic Skills. Let's get going. This video focuses on how much and what type of feedback to provide employees. In previous lessons we focused on delivery of feedback, timing, and the content of the message. But now we're going to ask the question how much and what type of feedback do employees need. Take a minute to think about this. What might make an employee more or less receptive to large amounts of feedback? Did any of these come to mind? Maybe the employee wants feedback on their performance. Maybe it's a new employee and they need more feedback. Maybe the company has a norm in which people just give lots of feedback. Maybe the employee is performing poorly, or the opposite, doing very, very well. Maybe it's in the nature of the job that more feedback is needed. And it can depend on whether the employees of great or little value to the organization as a whole. Obviously many factors are going to come into play. However the research tells us that providing different types and quantities of feedback to high-performers, adequate-performers, and poor-performers, as well as the brand new employee, will be helpful. Now let's look at differences in how feedback is provided to these four types of employees. So the first type of employee is the high-performer. A high performer is somebody with promotion potential. They need enough feedback to keep them motivating and performing, but not so much that they feel you're trying to micromanage or control them. Very positive and specific feedback is critical for this group. Remember, in an earlier video we talked about the benefits of positive feedback as people learn and set goals. You want to reap those benefits. You want to avoid saying things that are too general, like you're great. Give them something to think about, you're great at handling the initial customer contacts in our organization and keeping contacts on the phone. That'll get their minds thinking. Keep in mind the club sandwich as a guideline. We discussed this. If you do deliver negative feedback keep them in a positive frame of mind. The sandwich effect where you give quite a few compliments for each bit of negative feedback. One thing I didn't say here and you might have noticed this is give high performance feedback two times a week or anything specific like that. In reality it cannot be specific, it really depends on the people in your organization. Here's a rule of thumb you can keep in mind. Think about feedback in relative terms. So, how much feedback is given in comparison to low or adequate performers. Does the high performer get more, less or the same as those groups? The graph I'm going to show you shows the relationship that's advised. High performers get a little bit more feedback than your adequate performers and your low performers get more feedback than your higher performers. So let's move on to the other groups. Your adequate performers won't get promoted in your organization, but they, nonetheless, do great work. They don't need specific and behavioral feedback. They're already doing well, maybe for years. Your main concern is keeping these folks. So it's job satisfaction and retention. Adequate performers are the back bone of organizations. Without them things won't get done. These performers are already doing good work. They may be satisfied with their work but they may have other outside concerns like family maybe they're in a musical group and these things limit their ambition at work. You don't need to tweak their performance. However, you should provide recognition to these employees periodically. This is a form of positive feedback and it lets them know you appreciate them. Appreciation is different then the feedback discussed in our class. Instead of feedback about performance excellence your job is to say, you know, we're really glad you're here. Thank you for sticking with us all these years. Your consistency and your loyalty is essential to our business, and we appreciate you. You see the difference between the two? This feedback is appreciation. It's not designed to improve or tweak or change a behavior. Now let's move to the other group, which is poor performers. Poor performers aren't doing well on the job, they may in danger of being asked to leave. In some cases there may be situational factors hurting their performance. Their performance might improve with training. It could even improve sometimes with changes in management. Recall that you want to make sure that your feedback is controllable by an employee. When working with low performers, make sure that you've done your homework as a manager. Do they have clear goals? Do they have what they need to do their job? Are their peers giving them support? And have they gotten the training they need? If all of the above have been addressed then its time for feedback. Poor performers unfortunately need more frequent and specific feedback then the other groups. They also may need consequences for poor performance or discipline. Unfortunately the Pareto Effect of 80/20 rule holds here. Poor performers will take up about 80% of your time you allocate to giving feedback. While your adequate and your high performers will take about 20% of your feedback time. Finally, the research shows that another group of employees will benefit from feedback. Who are they? They're your newest employees. In what are called, well at least in the United States, onboarding processes, your newest employees get information about the organization. About the goals, the feedback, expectations. They get administrative information about benefits. They get information about training. Your newest employees are most at risk of quitting. And if onboarding is taken seriously, these folks will experience all sorts of benefits. For example, less stress. They will be more loyal in the long run. Their turnover will go down and they will be more engaged. So this step is very important. Those are great outcomes. So managers, take time to develop an onboarding process for your new employees. And, while onboard includes many activities, of which feedback is just one. This class suggests ways to improve the feedback component of an onboarding process. Let's take a look at the feedback you can provide. The first thing you would want to provide is specific feedback about major job duties. Also provide feedback about the competencies, skills and the knowledge needed to do the job. Give training advice, if they don't have a skill, where do they go to get it? What are the overall organizational goals of your company? How does an employee contribute to those goals directly, what is the relationship? Question for you, did you get this kind of information explicitly explained to you when you started your job, or any of your jobs? Typically this doesn't occur, but it can really enhance the employee's experience. Here we are with a chart now that show all the different amounts of feedback given to our groups in relation to one another. And we've added new hire in there, and you can see that they get quite a bit of information early on in their careers. Let's go to some examples. Helene is a budget analyst at a small freight company. And she analyzes monthly department budgeting and accounting reports to maintain control at the organization. And she advises the company on cost analysis and budget preparation. After three years she has saved the company millions of dollars and is expected to expand the duties she performs. So what kind of performer is she? What kind of feedback should she receive? That's the question. Helene is a high performer. You will be planning her promotion and enabling here to expand her skills to achieve that goal. Limit your feedback since she is learning and performing well without your help. When you do give feedback, be strategic. Commend her on her work that benefits the company. Be specific and detailed so there's no question about which activities are most beneficial. Give her options for technical training and work with her to shape her goals. Just as is suggested in the Pygmalion Effect. Now let's discuss the importance of this skill to you, and provide some opportunities to practice. The practices discussed in this video are important because they suggest ways to increase the effectiveness of your feedback through the allocation of your time. New employees should get more feedback. Longer term employees should get different amounts of feedback based on their performance. Now let's see how you could handle a few situations where this skill will be useful. Joyce is a barista at a London coffee shop. She's been there five years. She provides steady and good performance. She has a young son and a partner, and she likes her steady hours. She lives nearby and wants to continue providing income to her family. How much and what type of feedback should Joyce get? Second question. Hervey is a newly hired nurse in the obstetrics department of a large, inner city hospital in Boston. How much and what kind of feedback should he get? In summary, tailor the feedback to fit the person. Adjust frequency and content of feedback to meet the needs of the recipient you're working with. [MUSIC]
