How To Prevent A Feedback System From Becoming A Liability
Feedback is a critical workplace communication element and a crucial part of a workplace’s self-editing mechanism. A healthy feedback system can be instrumental in improving a federal workplace in a number of ways. It can enhance employee engagement, lead to individual and collective performance improvement, and contribute to a positive culture of accountability. However, if not implemented the right way or not managed properly, a feedback system also has the potential to become a liability for a federal workplace, department, or agency.
It’s important for federal managers and other stakeholders responsible for developing or maintaining a feedback system (formal or informal) within a federal workspace to understand a few ways feedback systems can become liabilities and the necessary preventive measures.
Improper Definition and Implementation
One thing that significantly undermines the effectiveness of a feedback system and may lead to it becoming a liability instead of an asset is how it’s designed, defined, and implemented. In many federal workplaces, relatively few employees are even aware of the existence of a feedback system, and they only make an effort to find out about its existence when they need to provide feedback on something that’s affecting them directly. In some cases, feedback is treated as an “occasional” activity, which may accompany a specific event, a major change, or evaluation cycles in a federal workplace.
As a result, relatively few people provide feedback, and it’s often influenced more by their personal grievances and desires than by what’s actually useful for the workplace.
The Solution
The management and relevant stakeholders should clearly define the protocols and processes associated with feedback and communicate them to the entire workforce. They should also ensure that each employee has access to the feedback system and can provide honest feedback without fear of retaliation.
Excessive Feedback
A feedback system that encourages federal employees to overshare or offer feedback on everything, regardless of how menial and irrelevant it might be, can easily overwhelm the system. It can overburden the individuals responsible for managing, sifting through, and responding to this feedback and may increase the probability of mistakes and irresponsible responses because of the sheer volume of feedback to process.
The Solution
Educating the workforce on the good practices of feedback. This includes communicating the relevant types of feedback, following a proper format for feedback submission, differentiating between actionable feedback and complaints, etc. Once federal employees who are expected to use the feedback system understand what constitutes valid feedback, the system will work efficiently.
Subjective Feedback Analysis
This is tied to the humanity of the stakeholders who are supposed to analyze and process the feedback. If it’s about them directly and they know who submitted the feedback (if it’s not anonymous), they may start harboring ill will about the person who submitted the feedback. The same can apply to feedback from individuals they are close to who have a favorable opinion or feedback about any of their decisions or initiatives. This subjective feedback analysis can disrupt the harmony within a federal workforce and lead to discord.
The Solution
The ideal solution to this problem is for all individuals responsible for feedback evaluation and analysis to develop an objective vision. However, since it can only be encouraged and not fully implemented, other practical frameworks like multiple team members going over the feedback, discussions, or blind feedback systems may be introduced to curb the subjective element from feedback analysis.
Mishandling Anonymity
The case can be made for both anonymous and identified feedback. Both have their pros and cons, and different federal workplaces, agencies, and departments may employ both or a hybrid of the two based on their feedback needs and protocols. The easiest mistake to make here is making feedback anonymous where it should be identified and identified where it should be anonymous. In some cases, anonymous feedback can easily mask genuine threats or malicious information leaks. In others, improper implementation of anonymous feedback, which ends up revealing the identities of the individuals who submitted the feedback anonymously, may cause irreversible damage to the trust necessary for feedback.
The Solution
The first to identify in any feedback system in a federal workplace is to identify whether it has to be fully anonymous or just some part of it is supposed to be anonymous while the rest are identified. A good rule of thumb is that any feedback that may lead to repercussions or retaliations against the person submitting feedback should remain anonymous, while feedback that may benefit the workplace and workforce may be identified (so the deserving individual can take credit).
Misinterpreting Feedback
No matter the quality of the feedback or feedback collection system, if it’s not interpreted and evaluated the right way, it’s useless at best, and at worst, it may actually have negative consequences for the workforce and workplace. In contrast, feedback provided with malicious intent, i.e., to misguide or confuse the individuals evaluating the feedback, may also lead to the feedback system doing more harm than good, especially if the negative intent is not identified while interpreting the feedback.
The Solution
There should be guidelines and frameworks for interpreting and processing feedback, starting with the identification of intent. Establishing checks/filters like relevance, urgency, and other similar factors and using them to categorize and then interpret feedback can help relevant individuals/stakeholders draw the right information and conclusions from the feedback.
Biased Feedback
Feedback can be just as easily biased as their interpretations. Biased feedback can fall under many categories: Intentional, unintentional, malignant, individually-biased, racially-biased, etc. They are more common when the feedback system is anonymous than when it’s traceable. Biased feedback can make the whole process inefficient or, in some cases, even damaging to morale or discipline within a workforce. Screening biased feedback out and rejecting it right away is also not a viable solution because, in some cases, biasness may be the motivation for some honest and actionable feedback.
The Solution
Biased feedback has to be tackled at the feedback collection/submission stage. Federal employees using a feedback system should be enlightened about biased and unbiased feedback and should be encouraged to state the facts and augment their feedback with facts and recognizable patterns rather than coloring their feedback with their biased opinions. Good Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) practices and training can also discourage employees from sharing feedback biased against any specific group or individual.
Unactionable Feedback
Many federal employees might start using a feedback system to vent instead of offering any useful or actionable feedback, and while such feedback can be used to assess the mood and morale of individuals or teams in rare cases, in most others, it’s simply a useless set of information managers have to process.
The Solution
A structured approach to feedback and educating federal employees on good feedback practices can solve this problem. If employees are required to provide not just feedback on what they don’t like or something they feel should be changed but also the specifics on how things should be changed or any other actionable advice they may have, the feedback will be both useful and constructive.
Fear of Retaliation
Lastly, a feedback system that leads to retaliation and negative consequences for the ones providing the feedback instead of the people or issues mentioned in the feedback will never encourage honest feedback. It would result in impotent and irrelevant feedback that would defeat the purpose of setting up a system at all.
Solutions
Anonymity and multi-layered assessment of feedback can prevent retaliation while drawing actionable conclusions and information from it.
Final Words
When it’s set up the right way, a feedback system can be one of the most significant assets in a federal workplace. It can lead to improvements in the workplace, reduction of inefficiencies, identification of problem spots (And individuals), and embedding a sense of responsibility and ownership in all members of the workforce. So, if you are developing and implementing a feedback system, make sure you avoid the pitfalls above and stick to the best practices.
