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Why continuous feedback cycles will always beat annual reviews and surveys

By now it’s no great secret, continuous feedback in work improves employee engagement. So, by extension, that makes continuous feedback an essential tool for enabling top performance and employee engagement.

Yet many managers still use less frequent, more traditional methods such as annual performance reviews and bulky engagement surveys, as their main engagement tool.

Annual reviews and engagement surveys give you a good baseline, but only continuous feedback works in the long-term

Annual surveys are a great starting point or baseline measure if you need to understand the pulse and performance of your people today.

In the words of Kevin Miller, the Chief Humanity Officer at APEX HR, “When people are not feeling engaged at work, they either quit and leave or more often, they quit and stay. The key word is “feeling.” He argues “we seldom get to the heart of issues using infrequent staff surveys that are often tick box exercises.”

Survey participation doesn't equal reliable feedback

Why is that the case? Well, one reason is because it relates to participation. It’s rare that you’d even get 100% of employees taking part in these surveys. The problem is that they can be anywhere from 50 to 100 questions long. It's hard to go through something like that without getting bored. When your survey's putting people to sleep, you can't expect thought out, informative responses.

In an interview with SHRM, Rajeev Peshawaria, CEO of The Iclif Leadership and Governance Centre and author of Open Source Leadership: Reinventing Management When There's No More Business As Usual, points out that those who work hardest have the least time for these surveys, and so ‘the bulk of the data, therefore [comes from] average- or low-performing employees.’

Engagement surveys are often pitched as anonymous, but questions about aspects of their work experience such as role or tenure can render such anonymity moot.  As Peshawaria points out, ‘There is no such thing as anonymous. If management really wants to find out who said what, they easily can. That said, the difference between ethical and unethical management is whether they choose to find out. It boils down to trust.’

Annual reviews aren’t any better for continuous feedback in work

Annual performance reviews are as far from continuous feedback in work as it’s possible to get. Without ongoing feedback to bridge the gaps, managers conducting them often fail to see the bigger picture. When performance is only reviewed once a year, things will slip through the cracks, whether they’re personal wins or issues an employee is struggling with.

According to research from Gallup, only 14% of employees agree that they're inspired by their performance reviews. In fact, traditional performance reviews were found to actually make performance worse about a third of the time, despite costing companies with 10,000 or more employees between $2.4 million and $35 million a year in lost working hours alone.

This supports findings in our HRD guide. It show that 80% of managers see little benefit from performance reviews, and 72% of employees find them to be more of a hindrance than helpful. It’s for these reasons that annual performance reviews have arguably sullied the name of performance management in general.

How ongoing feedback strengthens employee engagement

Provided that you can handle the higher expectations of an engaged workforce, then it’s in your best interests to provide employees with continuous feedback at work. After all, engaged employees are more productive, and have higher levels of creativity and innovation.

Timely feedback is most effective

Continuous feedback in work is essential for actually improving performance and engagement in any meaningful way. If you give an employee advice about something they did earlier that week, it’s going to click a lot more easily than if you critiqued them for something they did at the beginning of the previous quarter.

Continuous feedback exchanges give employees a voice

Workplace feedback isn’t just about telling employees how to do their jobs better. It’s also their chance to highlight any issues affecting their engagement or wellbeing, in order to help their managers to lead more effectively.

A continuous dialogue encourages honesty

You don’t need anonymity to get employees to be honest when you've built conversations based on trust. You just have to prove to them that they can speak their minds without being punished for it. Regular, ongoing feedback helps you build a rapport with your staff in a way nothing else can.

How to implement continuous feedback performance management

Now we’ve shown why it’s so important to have continuous feedback at work, it’s time for some tips on how to provide effective employee feedback on a regular basis:

Continuous feedback doesn't replace in person 1-on-1s

Employees may despise their annual performance reviews, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to sit down with their manager for a frank discussion about their experiences and career goals. Many employees crave effective feedback, and making time for 1:1s lets you discuss these things naturally, answering any questions as they arise.

Implement a regular employee check-in

While you should definitely make time for 1:1 meetings, too many can still be disruptive. So, managers and HR directors need a non-invasive and time-effective way of maintaining a dialogue with employees. Our employee check-in platform is extremely lightweight, but incredibly customisable. It takes mere minutes to submit an update, and it’s just as easy for managers to review them while being able to view question histories and respond to specific answers for quick problem resolution.

Use 360° feedback

360° feedback is great, not only for collecting insights that managers or HR leaders might overlook, but for providing a level of impartiality for employees who may have doubts about traditional performance reviews. Our 360° feedback tools allow you to customise question sets for people in different roles. This can really make a difference because it enables you to gather the most relevant insights from people with different areas of expertise or seniority.

Take employee feedback seriously

There’s no quick and easy substitute for building a dialogue of trust over time through continuous feedback in work. But, if that’s what you want, it’s not enough just to let employees have a voice. You need to actually take their feedback into consideration when you make decisions. If a suggestion is reasonable, you should incorporate it in the form of practical workplace policies. If you don’t, your employees are virtually guaranteed to lose faith in the feedback process.

Learn how a weekly employee check-in is the foundation of moving to more transparent feedback practices. Download our latest guide: Embracing continuous performance management.