How to build employee engagement via feedback in Microsoft Teams
Jack Binns M.A.
03rd July 2020
Communicating via Teams has proven absolutely vital for our business during lockdown, and we know the same is true for many of you, with over 80 million downloads of Teams already this year.
And with a great system for communication comes a great opportunity for improving employee engagement even in the face of the new ‘Big-C’.
So now seems like the perfect time to talk about how Teams can help you maintain an engaging, feedback-driven workplace culture in your organisation.
How employee feedback in Microsoft Teams creates an engaging workplace culture
Workplace feedback has become increasingly sought after in the last few years with Millennial and Gen-Z workers seemingly craving more manager feedback.
Feedback playa an essential role in both growing and maintaining employee engagement in the workplace, provided it goes both ways, and managers respond to employee feedback by taking action. Failing to address employee concerns can make staff lose faith in the feedback process, which can seriously compromise the validity of the resulting information.
Gallup has argued that traditional one-way feedback is ineffective. They attribute this to the role of performance management having become too complex for one-way, purely corrective feedback to be satisfactory.
Requesting feedback from an employee, however, has been found to create a trusting atmosphere more suitable for discussions around performance.
So, with consistent two-way feedback, you can establish a culture of open communication in your organisation.
Such communication is vital for maintaining an innovative and inclusive workplace, as well as an engaged one. Effective Microsoft Teams feedback has become a more important aspect of this than ever, given the platform’s role in helping to enable 2020’s surge in remote work.
The role of asynchronous communication in feedback
Even with the accessibility of video communication services like Microsoft Teams, sometimes it’s just not feasible to have a face-to-face chat with a colleague.
Whether you’re in different time-zones on opposite sides of the world, or you just have conflicting meeting schedules, the advantages of asynchronous communication make it essential for maintaining lines of communication.
Doing things like hovering over your employees or constantly calling them for updates are a sure-fire way to stray into micromanaging territory which can be awful for workplace trust.
On the other hand, asynchronous communication methods like email or direct messaging tend to be a lot less obtrusive. There’s no need to set an agreed-upon time, they don’t need to interrupt anything, and you have time to really consider how to respond effectively. That said, it’s definitely still possible to accidentally micromanage with these tools, and if you’re constantly messaging your team members for immediate updates, is it really asynchronous anymore?
Tools that empower asynchronous feedback like Weekly10’s employee check-in software are a great alternative to more classic sporadic management tools or godfobid stifling micromanagement practices.
What modern asynchronous feedback methods have over something like a traditional performance and engagement survey is that they’re designed to fit neatly into everyone’s routine without disrupting it. Keep things lightweight, frequent and asynchronous!
The 360° feedback service we offer is also conducted asynchronously, via surveys that can be easily customised for different types of respondents. This allows managers to evaluate performance based on a much larger pool of data from different levels of the organisation.
 Microsoft Teams and Weekly10 combine into the ultimate feedback tool
Microsoft Teams is a key tool for workplace communication and feedback. What makes it so flexible to different business needs is the array of specialised apps available for purchase or free download through its in-program store.
As we are officially partnered with Microsoft Teams, Weekly10 is one of these apps, and it enables users to access all of our platform’s features via Teams. Managers can even set up their team members with the app automatically when they complete their Teams sign-up. The benefits of using Weekly10 in Microsoft Teams include:
A blend of synchronous and asynchronous communication:
Adding Weekly10 into your Microsoft Teams feedback process gives you a choice of both synchronous and asynchronous communication options.
Managers can respond directly to individual answers on an employee’s update using the Weekly10 app.
Further discussion can be conducted through Teams’ direct messaging or video calling capabilities.
The same also applies to 360° feedback, as these surveys can be followed up with group video stand-ups.
A more involved feedback process for remote workers:
Managers should be sure to remember their duty of care for remote workers, who are at greater risk of isolation than centralised employees. But alongside our own service, Microsoft Teams is one of the most important tools we recommend for remote work.
While our weekly check-ins can make a great week-to-week support for sporadic performance reviews, it’s still important to emulate in-person one-to-ones with a video meeting.
This helps engagement by maintaining a connection with your remote team. Weekly10’s SMART Goals and OKRs help to give remote workers an idea of how their work feeds into company objectives.
Multiple accessibility options for feedback documentation:
Documentation is one of the most important parts of on-going Microsoft Teams feedback, or indeed, any feedback process at all. After all, we’ve all experienced the dread, fear and embarrassment of forgetting to document something correctly in a review session.
Weekly10 preserves the answer history for each question asked in a weekly check-in, along with any responses or additional comments. When it comes to actual performance reviews, these can be done via Weekly10m in Teams and managers can upload their documentation to Weekly10 for viewing by the subject employees.
Teams supports this in its own way by incorporating multiple file-sharing methods. Small files can be shared directly via the direct messaging interface, and Microsoft Teams also has full OneDrive integration, which is perfect for link-sharing or hosting larger files. This means you have a host of options to make referring back to prior Microsoft Teams feedback easy for everyone involved.
Machine-learning algorithms help managers gather more insightful data:
We’d be missing the mark if we tried to convey how useful the Weekly10 app can be for Microsoft Teams feedback without touching on how we use machine learning in the form of people analytics and sentiment analysis.
Our algorithms don’t just collate the answers to your weekly check-in questions but analyse the surrounding context and the language used. Not only can you use this information to create bespoke reports containing actionable results you can also discover new questions to ask based on previous results and what’s been found to work for other businesses similar to yours.
Together, our Weekly10 app and the Teams platform combine structured, consistent feedback with easy, accessible communication. For more information on the leading employee engagement platform on Microsoft Teams, or to learn more about feedback and workplace culture, visit our blog today. Also, we have some fantastic news: Weekly10 has now officially partnered with Microsoft to become the leading employee engagement & performance management tool on Teams. We’re developing new functionality to bring even more of the Weekly10 experience to the ever-more-popular Teams.
