Hardworking employees are the backbone of any successful business and, in recent years, employers have made employee engagement a top priority. One of the most important elements of employee engagement is providing a platform for honest feedback.
In fact, giving and receiving feedback is essential not only for employee engagement, but also for the long-term success of your organization. When properly executed, a positive feedback loop can help develop a stronger bond between employees and their managers, which will improve employee engagement and result in higher productivity.
However, understanding how to provide feedback tactfully and effectively is not as simple as it sounds. A positive feedback interaction can result in a stronger team member, whereas a negative experience can result in disaster. Understanding what employee feedback is, as well as the tools that are available to you, is the first step to improve your employee engagement.
[Read: Conducting Employee Reviews? Here's How to Do It Right]
What is employee feedback?
According to Hotjar, employee feedback is information that is exchanged between employees and managers about their performance or skills. This exchange can take place in a formal or informal environment and can happen with both supervisors and peers.
Feedback should be both positive and negative, as the aim is to reinforce positive behaviors, break bad habits and enable team members to achieve their goals. It must also be provided on a consistent basis to prevent individuals from developing — or slipping back into — toxic behaviors.
These six tools are specifically designed to help you provide a positive employee feedback loop and develop strong working relationships with your employees.
A positive feedback interaction can result in a stronger team member, whereas a negative experience can result in disaster.
TINYpulse
TINYpulse is an employee management software that allows entire teams to provide feedback. The tool tracks common problems across the company and provides detailed information to business leaders so they can track, measure and fix workplace problems. TINYpulse allows you to collect continuous employee feedback in real time, so you can understand the current state of your employee engagement.
Weekdone
One of the most important elements of employee feedback is ensuring each employee understands what is expected of them. Weekdone is employee management software that allows business leaders to organize company-wide goals and set weekly goals to measure progress. What sets Weekdone apart is its feedback and recognition feature, which is designed to praise an individual’s progress towards their goals through peer recognition.
SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey has been around since 1999 and has been one of the most popular online survey platforms over the past 20 years. Today, businesses use SurveyMonkey to create predesigned employee feedback templates to gather engagement insights. The tool can analyze survey data and provide information with your management team. SurveyMonkey can also be used to recruit, onboard, develop and retain employees.
Reflektive
Reflektive is a real-time performance management tool that is designed around empowering teams to perform to the best of their ability. The company’s “Performance” product helps businesses set organizational goals, create one-on-one conversations, conduct performance reviews and provide feedback. The tool aims to help companies create a culture of continuous feedback and help individuals hone their skills in giving and receiving feedback.
15Five
15Five is based on the simple idea that employees can take 15 minutes a week to answer a survey and managers spend five minutes reading and commenting on responses. The goal is to encourage employees to provide regular, useful feedback that travels up through the organization so that meaningful change can take place.
[Read: 5 Alternatives to Employee Reviews]
CultureAmp
CultureAmp is an engagement and performance review platform that is designed around providing continuous listening and feedback tools. The platform allows employees to nominate others to provide feedback based on how they work and interact with other team members. Managers can assess employee performance across their team to help the entire team improve. Finally, CultureAmp provides 180- and 360-degree feedback for managers, peers and teams to help your entire organization improve.
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