Addressing the Manager Performance Feedback Void in Workplace

Managers may be playing an important role in employee experience, but while managers have a significant impact on the employee experience, they hardly receive any feedback on their own performance. This is as per a survey by Gallup. Very few employees have been able to provide feedback on their manager.

As per the survey fewer than 1 in 4 have formally provided a feedback for their manager’s performance. And about one-third of managers say they have gotten feedback from peers.

Importance of manager performance feedback

Managers and employees generally agreed that managers were strong in the “baseline expectations” of their role. They also agreed managers’ weaknesses were in the realm of coaching. Compared to workers, however, managers tended to be overconfident about their delivery of recognition and frequent feedback, and tended to underrate their ability to create accountability for employee performance.

“This study serves as a call to action: Managers need the development, feedback and support required to manage people effectively and foster highly productive teams,” Ben Wigert, director of research and strategy, workplace management at Gallup, wrote in an analysis.

Statistics on feedback in the workplace

Gallup had come up with feedback statistics based on responses by perspective: where employees and managers agreed on strengths and weaknesses and where they disagreed. The global analytics and advisory firm surveyed more than 15,000 adults, including over 2,500 managers.

Managers strength

As per the statistics on feedback in the workplace employees and managers agreed on many of the strengths and weaknesses. Among the strengths, both said managers excelled at responding quickly to calls and messages, providing “very helpful” feedback, being approachable with “any type of question,” and also on how the work being done impacted customers. As per Wigert, “these behaviors have the lowest correlations to employee engagement observed in the study, indicating they are less likely to elevate performance than other key behaviors.”

Managers weaknesses

The most common managers weaknesses being to provide meaningful feedback, motivating outstanding performance, removing performance barriers and discussing strengths. The survey by Gallup found that the lowest-rated behavior providing “meaningful feedback in the last week” combines quality and frequency to create what the firm calls the “coaching habit,” which is “among the best predictors of employee engagement Gallup has ever studied.”

In fact, Gallup said, managers demonstrated weakness in all five of what it has determined to be the “most important manager behaviors that drive employee engagement.” To fix this, it is recommended routine coaching conversations that allow for discussion of goals, areas for development, strengths and recognition.

Importance of employee engagement by Gallup

How does feedback improve performance that is through conversations. The concept of “meaningful conversations,” was laid out by Gallup. Manager performance feedback components included recognizing recent work, fostering connections between co-workers, clarifying current goals and priorities, engaging in an appropriately long conversation and focusing on employee strengths.

Its pretty know fact that while workers can benefit tremendously from coaching, managers rarely have the support or resources to step into this role. Even when such resources are available, organizations have more success when they hold managers accountable to that training.

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