Continuous Feedback

Continuous feedback: a definition

Continuous feedback (التغذية الراجعة المستمرة), also called ongoing feedback, is the practice of giving an employee observations on their work close to the event and on a regular basis, instead of confining those observations to a periodic appraisal that comes months later.

The arrangement it replaces is one in which what the employee hears about their work is held back until that periodic appraisal. Under continuous feedback, an observation is not saved for a later occasion. It is given near the moment the work took place, and observations of this kind are given regularly rather than once in a cycle.

What closeness to the event solves in continuous feedback

An observation that reaches the employee four months after the event has lost the thing that makes it usable: its context.

The loss of context shows in three ways:

• The employee no longer remembers the details of the situation. Four months on, they cannot recall exactly what happened at the time, or what they did in it.
• The employee cannot put right what has already passed. The work the observation refers to has been delivered, and the moment at which it could have been done differently is over.
• The employee may have built a habit on what happened. For four months they may have repeated the very thing the observation was meant to change.

An observation given close to the event arrives while it can still be acted on. The employee still remembers the situation, the work can still be corrected, and no habit has yet formed around what happened. That alone is the difference between a piece of information and a remedy. An observation received four months later tells the employee something about work that is finished. An observation received close to the event gives them the chance to change it.

Conditions that make continuous feedback acceptable

For continuous feedback to be accepted by the person it is given to, four conditions apply:

• It addresses a specific behaviour, not the person. “The report arrived two days after the deadline” is feedback of this kind. “You are disorganised” is not. The first sentence names something that happened: a particular report, a deadline, and a delay of two days. The second sentence names nothing that happened. It describes the employee as a person.
• It describes the impact. The feedback states what followed from what happened. The employee may not see the other end of their own action: the consequences that what they did had for someone else may never come into their view unless they are told. Describing the impact brings that other end into the conversation.
• Negative feedback is given in private, and positive feedback in public if the person it concerns accepts that. Negative feedback is kept between the manager and the employee. Positive feedback may be given in front of others, but only where the employee it concerns accepts being praised that way.
• It runs in both directions. Feedback goes from the manager to the employee, and also from the employee to the manager. A manager who gives feedback but does not receive it builds a relationship of evaluation, not a relationship of improvement. In a relationship of evaluation, one side judges and the other is judged. In a relationship of improvement, both sides are working on the same work, and each can tell the other what would make it better.

The mistake that robs continuous feedback of half its value

The mistake is turning continuous feedback into a tool that is used only when something goes wrong.

When an observation reaches the employee only together with a failure, being called in by the manager for a conversation becomes a signal of concern in itself. The invitation alone tells the employee that something is wrong, before the conversation has begun. The team, for its part, learns that silence is good news: as long as the manager says nothing, nothing has gone wrong.

This robs the tool of half its value and turns the other half into a burden. The half that is lost is feedback on what went well, which no longer reaches the employee at all. The half that remains is feedback on what went wrong, and because it now arrives on its own, every conversation carries the weight of a failure.

Where continuous feedback stands in relation to the performance appraisal

Continuous feedback does not abolish the periodic appraisal. It changes its nature, so that the periodic appraisal becomes a review of what is already known, not an uncovering of surprises. Feedback is also a route by which an employee learns what others already know and the employee does not, which falls in the blind area of the Johari Window.

The practical rule is that nothing should appear in the appraisal that the employee is hearing for the first time. Where continuous feedback is in place, each observation the appraisal contains has already reached the employee close to the event it concerns, and the review brings together what the manager and the employee have already discussed.

So a new observation that appears in the appraisal is evidence that it was withheld at the time when it would have been useful. The employee then hears it months after the event, at the point where, as described above, the context has gone, the work can no longer be put right, and a habit may already have formed.

What keeps continuous feedback going

Continuity does not come from reminders. It comes from an arrangement that carries continuous feedback, and that arrangement has three parts:

• A short, regular one to one meeting between the employee and their manager. It gives feedback a fixed and recurring occasion, so that whether feedback is given does not depend on someone being reminded to give it.
• Space in the work tools themselves for recording an observation when it happens. The observation is then written down at the moment of the event, in the same tools in which the work is done, rather than kept back for a later occasion.
• A specific question in the review about what the employee needs from their manager. The question is not about what the manager needs from the employee.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.