Feedback: the development stimulus of your employees

Your employees can use Dialog to request feedback on what they find important and where they want to grow. However, we also know that a feedback culture does not just happen. With the right guidance, you can encourage your employees to regularly ask for and give feedback. To support you in this, we have developed a toolkit with various interventions and tips on how to approach this.
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Toolkit Feedback

This toolkit contains steps and interventions you can take to encourage your employees to regularly ask for and give feedback. We have developed supporting materials so you can get started right away!

The worth of Feedback

Positive feedback is motivating
Positive feedback leads to increased motivation and engagement among employees. After all, it's nice to hear what others appreciate in you and useful to gain more insight into your opportunities for growth. Additionally, (positive) feedback can strengthen both internal and external work relationships.
Constructive feedback
(Negative) feedback is often confused with criticism. This is actually quite unfortunate, because with the right intentions and tools, criticism can in fact be a form of constructive feedback. Constructive feedback is the best form of feedback for smart and result-oriented development - after all, it brings blind spots into view.
More feedback equals more openness and trust
A feedback culture is characterized by a low threshold for sharing tips and highlights with each other. There is a more conscious focus on each other's performance, which can be adjusted and, of course, appreciation can be expressed. The (frequent) giving and receiving of feedback thus strengthens the trust and collaboration of a team.

Find more inspiration about feedback on our blog:
Why Feedback (Does Not) Make Sense

Feedback in Dialog​

360-degree feedback
Employees in Dialog can request feedback on their goals and competencies from individuals both within and outside the organization. These individuals can be managers, coaches, colleagues, but also suppliers or even customers. In Dialog, the employee can also respond to feedback (through a sort of chat function). In this way, the employee can delve deeper into the feedback to get a complete picture of his/her performance. Of course, Dialog does not replace the face-to-face sharing of feedback. Dialog is actually a great addition and place for documentation."
Feedback & Manager
Managers can also gather feedback about their employees.

Read here how a manager can request feedback about an employee.
Fact check
How is feedback currently utilized in your organization? In Dialog, you have real-time insight into how often feedback is requested and given. This can be very valuable when you want to measure the effect of a particular intervention.

Read here how you can view this quickly and easily.
Unsolicited Feedback
In Dialog, you can also give unsolicited feedback to colleagues. A good way to use this feature is by giving colleagues unsolicited compliments. This can help initiate the use of feedback.
Feedback questionnaire
Dialog also offers the option to request feedback through questionnaires. A questionnaire can lower the threshold, especially for employees who are still unfamiliar with asking for and giving feedback. This can be added by the super administrator, or at the organization or team level.

Read here how you can easily create a questionnaire in Dialog.

Stimulating feedback

This is how you give feedback!
Do your employees know how to give good feedback, how to receive feedback, and how to handle criticism? Often, employees are somewhat uneasy or even unfamiliar with the do's and don'ts of feedback. Workshops on feedback can help in this regard.

A good feedback workshop can enhance the quality of feedback, contribute to integrating feedback into daily work activities, and encourage the use of feedback.

Here you can find an example script and invitation email for a feedback workshop.
A good example leads to good follow
Have the management team, HR, and managers lead by example, regularly asking for and giving feedback. Without a good example, employees are less likely to see its importance and, in the worst case, may even perceive it as unimportant.

  • Ask for feedback from colleagues outside your team every month - this way you reach multiple parts of the organization
  • Give at least one compliment every week to a colleague outside your own team
  • Create a team goal to encourage and keep feedback top of mind
Set an (organizational) goal
How often do you expect employees to ask for and give feedback each month or quarter? By setting a goal in advance, you know what you are working towards as an organization. This creates a bit more pressure and expectation on the employees, and less non-commitment - this must, of course, fit your organization.
Inspirational communication - emails
It is important to communicate frequently about the value of feedback and how it contributes to the development and ambitions of both the employee and the organization. You can activate employees with inspiring communication to reflect on their development and discuss it.

Here you can find a mail template for employees, and a mail template for managers.
Inspirational Communication - Video Message
It's even more valuable to have the inspiring and activating communication sent by someone from the Executive Board or Management Team. This way, employees and managers can see directly that they also find it important to give feedback. This makes the message even more powerful.
Feedback as part of team sessions
Are team sessions held by managers in your organization? If so, it can be valuable to join these and make feedback a part of the session. Taking time to reflect on valuable feedback received can lead to a positive atmosphere and inspire managers to discuss this with their employees.

Here you can find a step-by-step plan on how to make feedback a part of a team session. Here you can find the mail template to prepare for the team session.
Feedback alone does not lead to action
The maximum value of feedback is achieved when the input (feedback) leads to a process of self-reflection with new actions. Particularly, having a conversation about feedback and focusing on action-oriented self-reflection contributes to the development stimulus. Consider revisiting gathered feedback during one-on-ones, coaching conversations, work meetings, and retrospectives. There are plenty of opportunities to truly follow up on feedback.

Tips & Tricks

Start small: compliments first
Is feedback experienced as exciting in your organization? Then it is a good idea to lower the threshold and focus on providing only positive feedback. This motivates and invites you to obtain feedback from colleagues more often.
Ask for feedback at fixed times
Your employees are, of course, extremely busy with their daily tasks. In the hustle and bustle of the day, many employees forget to take time to reflect on their own development. Therefore, it's very valuable to build a structure so that this truly becomes part of the work routine.

Have teams schedule a joint monthly moment, where all employees really get the time to engage with this. Naturally, guidance from the manager is of great importance.
Feedback as part of the way of working
Ultimately, you want feedback to become part of the way of working. Therefore, link feedback to moments where it would naturally fit. Guidance from the manager is important, especially in the beginning, to give employees that extra push and to keep talking about it periodically. Examples of these moments:

  • During reflection
  • Before an evaluation moment
  • Before a one-on-one or team session
  • After giving a presentation
  • After completing a project
  • At the end of the week or month
 
Scheduling staff
It is often difficult for operational staff to find a moment in their working day when they have time to reflect on their development. In addition, they do not work behind a PC or laptop, so they do not work in Dialog during working hours. Does your organization have operational staff? Then schedule each employee periodically for half an hour, for example every month. You can then make a PC or laptop available from the office on which you can work in Dialog. Here too, management from the manager is very important.
Openly sharing experiences
Have several employees from different levels in the organization participate in an inspirational video or message for the intranet. Share experiences with Dialog, and how feedback helps contribute to their goals and ambitions. How has this feedback helped in the short and long term?
Learn from teams where feedback is already widely used
Of course, you don't always have to reinvent the wheel. It may be that there are already teams within your organization that already make extensive use of feedback. Fortunately, you have immediate insight into this via the feedbackrapport in Dialog. You can filter this page by teams. This way you can quickly see how often feedback is used within certain teams.

Ask the manager of such a team what he or she does to encourage feedback from employees. This can be valuable input that you can use again.
Organize feedback theme weeks
Theme weeks are a great way to draw extra attention to certain themes. Inspiring, activating and possibly even rewarding play a role in a theme week of feedback. A positive (extensive) incentive to discover the functionality, with a playful element that, for example, the teams with the most feedback requests are rewarded with a nice extra.

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