Honest and constructive feedback is a valuable tool for any manager. But while you may have no trouble offering feedback to your IT employees, receiving honest feedback can be challenging. There are many reasons your employees could be reluctant about being honest — but overcoming those roadblocks and encouraging feedback can benefit your team in a big way.
Why employees avoid giving feedback
Even if it’s solicited, a lot of IT employees are worried about offering feedback. One of the most common reasons is concern that their opinions will be used against them, resulting in a more difficult working environment or negative consequences for their career. If this concern exists, employees will typically either give falsely positive feedback, or not speak up at all.
Another popular reason employees refrain from giving feedback is the belief that their thoughts and suggestions won’t be taken seriously, or even considered at all. If they feel, rightly or wrongly, that you’re just asking for feedback to humor them or because it’s expected, they won’t waste their time offering it.
How to encourage honest feedback
Whether your employees are afraid of recrimination or feel they won’t be taken seriously, you can overcome these issues by clearly communicating what will and will not happen when feedback is offered, how you’ll use the feedback you receive, and how your employees can help.
Trust is essential to giving and getting honest feedback. In order to find out what your IT employees really think, you need to create a company culture of open, authentic communication that encourages honesty. To do this:
- Start with yourself. If you can’t be honest with yourself, you can’t expect to do better with your employees. Genuine feedback can be a powerful tool to help you identify opportunities for improvement and change your company for the better — but only If you really want to hear it. If you’re just going through the motions, your efforts could have negative consequences.
- Show your commitment. Simply asking for honesty isn’t enough to get real feedback. Demonstrate that you’re offering more than talk by acting on the feedback you receive and making changes that address employee concerns. When you show that you’re serious, you’ll find your employees far more open and willing to participate in feedback.
- Enlist your people. It’s far too common for leaders and managers to solicit feedback from employees, and then vanish while they “fix” everything themselves. This not only places more pressure on you, but also keeps employees from seeing the efforts you’re making to incorporate feedback. Make sure your processes are designed to engage everyone in making changes.
- Check your reactions. If you’re known for reacting poorly to bad news or things you don’t want to hear, don’t be surprised when your employees fail to offer honest feedback. Taking note of and tempering your reactions will go a long way toward an open and secure workplace environment.
As a leader, your actions and attitudes set the tone for your IT team. Encouraging and gathering honest feedback — whether you use simple surveys, focus groups, interviews, team meetings, or informal hallway chats — can benefit you significantly and help you build a successful, productive, and focused workplace that gets results. If you want to find out how to better solicit honest employee feedback, contact The Armada Group today. They are industry experts who know exactly the types of feedback you should be seeking from employees, and how to get it.
