How to create a feedback culture in the workplace
Giving feedback can feel awkward, no matter how many times you’ve done it before. It’s only natural to shy away from sharing a difficult truth, after all. As humans, we’re wired to stay away from what’s uncomfortable — and giving feedback can often fall into that category.
Honest feedback isn’t something we can simply avoid though, especially in a small business where people, relationships, and communication matter hugely. These hard conversations are a necessary part of business, so it’s time to get comfortable with them.
I’ve always felt that giving feedback gets easier the more often you do it. You know what to say, how to say it, and your employees are used to hearing it. That’s why creating a feedback culture is the way forward.
In this guide, I’m sharing everything you need to know about feedback culture. I’ll explain the benefits, the challenges, and a step-by-step process for introducing (or improving) your feedback culture.
What is feedback culture?
Feedback culture refers to an environment where feedback is actively welcomed. Employees are encouraged to give feedback to others, and to receive it openly from others. At the heart of feedback culture are feelings of trust and safety, and having the skills and opportunities to give and receive feedback — both good and bad.
In companies with a culture of feedback, sharing opinions and giving constructive criticism are considered normal. Feedback isn’t only given in a yearly performance review. Instead, people are encouraged to share feedback when it feels appropriate to, in a clear and meaningful way.
The benefits of feedback culture
Having a feedback culture means your employees feel safe and secure to share what’s on their mind. This is a huge benefit in itself, but creating a culture of feedback has a range of other benefits, including:
- Higher levels of trust: Employees feel safe enough to trust managers and leaders with their thoughts, opinions, and criticisms.
- Greater sense of community: Team members are empowered to give feedback and feel like their voice is heard, promoting a more inclusive and welcoming work environment.
- Increased efficiency and speed: Real-time feedback mechanisms allow team members to work quickly and adapt to change to stay efficient.
- Higher quality output: Employees give feedback throughout a project, allowing for a much higher quality deliverable at the end.
- More employee growth and professional development: Employees learn new skills or improve existing ones like adaptability, communication, and teamwork.
- Better employee retention rates: Team members are listened to and problems get dealt with, meaning fewer people leave due to relationship, communication, or trust issues.
- Reduced friction: As people are happy to give both negative and positive feedback openly, there’s less friction between team members and it’s easier (and quicker) to make decisions and move forward.
- Higher job satisfaction: Employees feel a greater sense of purpose and have more autonomy over their work, leading to higher levels of job satisfaction and employee happiness.
- Better teamwork: With fewer communication and feedback barriers in the way, it’s easier for team members to work together to achieve their goals.
- Increased employee morale: A feedback culture promotes high levels of trust and transparency, which improves employee morale.
- Higher levels of employee engagement: With more ways to give feedback, employees are more likely to get involved and take part.
- More innovation: As your team members give feedback and take action regularly, they can adapt and innovate faster than before.
- More data to inform future decisions: Every piece of feedback you receive is valuable, and by regularly collecting it you’ll have more insights that you can use to drive innovation and growth forward.
Encouraging employees to share feedback with others helps everyone grow, learn faster, and reach goals in a way that other organisations can’t. A feedback culture allows your small business to stand out from others around you thanks to happier employees, a stronger culture, and the ability to innovate fast.
Why adopting a feedback culture can be challenging
It feels like there are no downsides to a feedback culture, but that doesn’t make it easy to achieve. In my experience, creating a culture of feedback has some natural challenges that most small businesses encounter, like:
- Resistance to change: It’s hard to get people to change, especially if they’ve been used to working in the same way for years (or decades). To promote change, you’ll need to do it in the right way.
- Underlying lack of trust: If there’s a lack of trust within the organisation, a feedback culture will be hard to achieve. You’ll need to work on the trust issues first.
- No easy-to-use feedback channels: People can’t give or receive feedback if you don’t have the right systems in place. This is where feedback tools come in handy.
- Lack of training and coaching: It’s difficult for employees to start giving or receiving feedback effectively if they don’t know how. Good training can overcome this obstacle.
- Scared to receive negative feedback: Most of us don’t like the idea of being given negative feedback. Help employees overcome this with effective training and coaching and a growth mindset.
- Worried about implications of giving negative feedback: If there are pre-existing issues, some managers or team members might worry about retaliation from giving feedback. Work together to create an environment of trust and safety.
- Lack of time: Creating feedback systems, training team members, and giving feedback all take time and energy. Consider other areas where you can save time, to free up some headspace to work on your feedback culture.
The good news is that these obstacles can be overcome. It’s possible to foster a culture of feedback within your small business at any stage, it just might take a little longer or require more of your time and energy to get started. Having the right tools and a step-by-step guide to follow can make all the difference.
10 ways to create a culture of feedback in your small business
A feedback culture isn’t just for big businesses with a dedicated employee experience team. I want to encourage you to build a culture of feedback within your small business — even if there’s only a handful of you. Doing this now sets you up for success in the future as you grow or as your needs change.
Whether you’re starting from scratch or want to improve the way you currently handle feedback, here’s my step-by-step guide on how to create a feedback culture. I’ve included steps that I’ve taken, and some of the initiatives we use at Charlie to support feedback within our small business environment.
1. Lead from the top
To demonstrate the importance of feedback, it needs to be highly visible. The dedication to feedback culture in the work environment needs to come from the top, or other people won’t feel empowered to take action.
Openly give feedback to others, invite them to share feedback with you, and share updates on how you’ve responded to recent feedback. Act as a role model for continuous feedback culture in action and your employees will follow your lead.
2. Build trust in your employees
For your feedback culture to succeed, your employees need to trust in you and each other. Build an environment of psychological safety and open communication, and give your team members permission to be open, honest, and candid with each other.
Employees that feel safe to take risks and fail, and to openly share thoughts with each other, feel a greater sense of belonging and safety. This sense of community makes giving and receiving feedback easier, and creates a more welcoming workplace culture. You can also read more about the psychological contract to understand employee’s expectations.
3. Outline your expectations
Your team members might agree with a need to give and receive feedback, but it’s hard to put that into action without a framework. Create a simple feedback process or system, set clear expectations on how it works, and give guidance on how to use it.
Make it easy for employees to give feedback by explaining how they can do this, how often you expect feedback to be given, and examples of what this could look like. Be clear on how to express a negative opinion, and set guidelines around reasonable ways to approach difficult conversations.
Once you’re happy with your guidance, publish it somewhere that all your employees can access. We’ve made our Charlie handbook public for all to see, but an alternative might be to use the document centre built into your HR software. For example, Charlie users can create and share their employee handbook directly within the platform.
4. Provide feedback training
Help your employees to get comfortable giving feedback by offering them training on how to do this effectively. Empower your team members to learn new feedback skills, understand how to give honest feedback, and support their professional growth so they can not only develop their own abilities but encourage others to grow too.
Use a ready-made training course, invite a trainer to come in for a live session, or put together your own guidance for employees with examples. Make your training content available for employees to access at any time, so they can refresh their knowledge before they give feedback.
5. Offer coaching to managers
As well as general training on how to give and listen to feedback, it’s useful to give your managers specific coaching on feedback and performance management. Although it should be part of everyone’s role to share feedback, managers should know how to give meaningful feedback and support employees to grow.
At Charlie, we support our managers and leaders with dedicated training on how to give constructive feedback, how to set expectations and deadlines, and how to receive feedback. We also offer guidance on two systems we use — the 4s Framework based on storytelling, and the SBI model of giving feedback.
6. Allow anonymous feedback
A major barrier to giving feedback can be putting a name (or face) to the complaint or criticism. Remove this barrier and encourage more open and honest feedback by offering ways your employees can give feedback anonymously.
There are various ways you can make it easy for people to give anonymous feedback. For an in-person team, you can introduce a suggestion box in the office. A digital suggestion box is a great alternative for a hybrid or remote team. You can also use online forms, surveys, or feedback tools to offer even more ways to share feedback anonymously.
7. Offer a range of feedback channels
There shouldn’t only be one or two ways to give and receive feedback. For your feedback culture to be a success, there should be a range of methods people can use to share their opinions and constructive criticism.
Allow time for feedback in your team meetings, host regular one-on-one meetings or check-ins, send pulse surveys, set up a suggestion box, or host a Q&A session with the leadership team. Work with your team members to find out which methods they would use, and put them into place.
8. Make employee feedback a habit
To create a strong feedback culture, it should feel almost like a habit to give and receive feedback. In the best workplaces, feedback is a natural part of working there. Make it easy for people to create a habit around feedback by removing barriers and creating opportunities for frequent feedback.
Introduce more feedback channels like the ones I’ve mentioned above, and consider how often you should run them. You could send weekly pulse surveys to check employee happiness and morale, or arrange monthly meetings with direct reports to gather or follow up on feedback. Giving regular feedback should be part of everyone’s weekly or monthly routine, with feedback sessions scheduled when it fits the team’s needs the best.
9. Improve your employee performance review process
Feedback should be given when it’s needed, but that doesn’t mean you can’t also improve your annual review process at the same time. A strong, effective, and meaningful review process gives you a useful evaluation tool to encourage growth and development — so spend some time considering how to improve yours.
An easy way to make a positive change is to find a way to standardise and automate some of the process. Performance management software tools can help you streamline the workflow and ensure everyone follows the same process. Another area to focus on is the performance review questions you ask, whether you seek 360-degree feedback, and how you use the feedback to create an action plan for the future.
Our approach to personal development at Charlie includes:
- Monthly 1-1 meetings
- PDPs or personal development plans
- Our career progression framework
- The use of 360 reviews
There are also plenty of opportunities for team members to share feedback with each other. We also use Charlie’s performance management feature to host annual performance reviews.
CHARLIE FEATURE PERFORMANCE management screenshot
10. Act on feedback given
As your employees get more comfortable providing feedback, you need to show that it’s listened to and acted on. Create a simple system for reviewing, following up, and acting on feedback — and find a way to share this progress with your team members.
People are more likely to engage with your approach of continuous improvement and feedback if they know they’re taken seriously. Share some of the outcomes of issues raised or ideas shared, so employees feel encouraged and empowered to share their own feedback.
Build your own feedback culture
Creating a healthy feedback culture is about more than installing a suggestion box or asking people for their best ideas. Use this guide and my insights from my time here at Charlie to help you put together a plan on how you can build your own feedback culture at your small business.
Your feedback culture is a valuable step in creating a better workplace, but it’s only part of the equation. If you’re dedicated to creating the kind of small business environment that your employees rave about, read our performance management guide. It contains everything you need to know about feedback, performance management, and employee development.
Feedback culture FAQs
Have more questions about feedback culture? Here are some of the questions we get asked frequently, along with our best answers.
What is an open feedback culture?
An open feedback culture is an environment where people feel safe and comfortable enough to share feedback with others, both good and bad. They feel a sense of psychological safety and aren’t worried about any potential repercussions about sharing honest feedback.
How do I build a good feedback culture?
The steps I’ve outlined above are a great way to start building a company culture that supports and encourages feedback. Use these steps alongside feedback tools to put together a practical plan for your business.
What are the 7 key elements of effective feedback?
Some people consider there to be seven key elements of effective feedback. These are: goal-referenced, tangible and transparent, actionable, user-friendly, timely, ongoing, and consistent.
