A thriving organisation is not built in a day. It requires constant efforts to cultivate a positive and productive work environment. In this journey to success, feedback plays a pivotal role, encouraging personal and professional growth within individuals and fostering collaboration, closeness, transparency, and openess within teams.  In this digest, we list the key elements of why feedback is important to the organisational culture. We then give you our 10 tips of how to embed constructive feedback and build a positively sustainable culture.

Why is Feedback Important

Feedback is extremely important for an organisation’s culture for many reasons:

• It fosters a culture of closeness, openness, communication, and transparency: If your company is established, hierarchical or have a high number of employees, it is easy to get lost in the crowd as an employee, this can cause high degrees of separation between an individual and the leadership
• It encourages continuous learning and self-development
• It opens dialogues for improving HR processes
• It sets expectations of career progression
• It promotes diversity by moving away from stereotyping
• It promotes positivity, motivation, and confidence when delivered correctly
• It promotes mentorship and empathy
• It leads to employee retention, as individuals know where they stand, and how farther can go in the organisation

How to implement feedback in your organisation’s culture

For feedback to be effective in your organisation, you can aim to promote the below 10 tactics:

1. 1-2-1 meetings with managers should always include few minutes of giving feedback
2. Raise awareness through HR training on how to give and receive feedback and avoid pointless criticism
3. For constructive feedback, encourage starting with positive feedback before discussing the ‘room for improvement’. Providers should also stay away from negative terminology, lead with empathy, give examples, propose change with practical and doable solutions, and be aware of impact to mental health
4. Encourage employees to provide feedback to their managers, and not just follow a top down approach.
5. Encourage skip level meetings, so employee has a chance to get more exposure, more feedback, and a platform to showcase their strengths and build a good reputation
6. Encourage employees upon onboarding to get mentors, and to be mentors
7. Run Employee Appreciation Mondays, where every employee needs to say, or send a positive feedback to another employee. This will also help your company in reducing the Monday Blues, and give your employees something to look forward to.
8. Encourage written appreciation (email & chat) so people can use it in end of year review and promotions applications.
9. Provide learning opportunities (internal and external) for self-improvement
10. Enforce feedback to be given quarterly by managers to set employees’ expectations for performance reviews

Conclusion

Embracing a culture of feedback is a commitment to transparency and shared accountability. It empowers employees to reach their full potential, fosters a collaborative spirit, and ultimately drives organisational success. As Winston Churchill once said, “Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” With constructive feedback as your guide, organisations are well-equipped to navigate challenges, celebrate and accelerate successes, and build a future brimming with possibilities.