Getting quality feedback doesn't have to be surrupticious

Undercover checking may work and indeed mystery shopping is a well used and legitimate format employed by many firms. Usually, though, firms advise their staff that mystery shopping exercises are carried out so as to avoid mistrust. They are also generally completed by external parties to aid impartiality. But what about just asking people?

This may sound like old hat but maybe, for some, this will be a new take on the use of surveys.

How much time have you spent having to gather information for appraisals? How often do the individuals feel a certain sense of resentment or that you have not fully understood what they have to cope with? who they had to work with? etc  etc – in fact all of the usual gripes.

Having seen all of this before I decided to ask my team to measure themselves against their outputs. Wow – what a difference. Suddenly they had to come up with measurables that would demonstrate how well they did. They also had to produce evidence to go with it. It is astounding how inventive people can be given the chance.

The use of surveys was critical in their evidence gathering. This included customer surveys – internal and external – as well as direct line feedback. Surveys were carried out on both a team and individual basis.

Why go down this route?

First benefit – improved team working as they all worked together to come up with ideas for measurements. They also felt a sense of team responsibility to make things work as part of the outputs related to team performance which they would be measuring!

Second benefit – increased trust (never underestimate the importance of creating genuine trust). This came with them finding that there was no hidden agenda or nasty shocks at review time.

Third benefit – they felt truly empowered (something we had been working towards for some time) to change working practices to achieve better results but without breaking any rules (the ones that can’t be broken!).

Fourth benefit – they got a very fair appraisal which needed a lot less of my time in monitoring work and preparation. There were fewer issues over non-performance – mainly because they were the ones providing the evidence of negative performance.

This was NOT ABDICATION. This was EMPOWERMENT.

Interestingly it did not lead to abuse with people trying to present glowing reviews of themselves and no negatives. Maybe it is because nobody thought I would believe a 100% perfect score, maybe it was because they wouldn’t believe it themselves or maybe it was the effort of trying to fiddle evidence. Either way it didn’t happen.

Indeed they were happy to highlight the negatives as a way of demonstrating what they wanted to focus on improving next time round and what help, if any, was needed to aid personal development.

Was it any surprise that they quickly became recognised as the top performing support team in the Country? I don’t think so!

There are now many companies where teams have been given the responsibility of getting their own feedback for performance reviews. I now market an inexpensive system that allows them to do this. The system works by use of agreed questionnaire templates to reflect the outputs to be measured (although there is flexibility to change the questionnaires)  and allows either the Line Manager or HR to retain control of setting up individual access, groupings for Managers to access the data and options of who can see what data.

Surveys used by teams to make change happen

Another use I have seen is one team/unit/division of a company posting results of its surveys for the rest of the firm to see. This can be useful in a number of ways assuming the company has the right environment/support to handle it.

When the team publishes its results it usually includes feedback from internal groupings as well. They then sit down – usually facilitated – with the other areas of the company to thrash out what the issues are and how things can be changed for the better. It is a big step to open yourself up to this and needs a lot of support the first time round. However, it helps bring out into the open the issues and quite often highlights problems caused by processes used and sometimes the other people who have criticised them. Understanding what happens in the department helps break down the barriers and eases resolution leading to improved working relations. Opening yourselves up to others creates trust. Other parts of the company that have become involved will often then follow the same process – leading to a tidal wave of improvements and better working relationships. There can even be a non vocalised pressure for other parts of the company to respond by publishing their performance results.

Other points to consider

There are so many ways surveys can tell you what is happening, be it 360 degree, reverse feedback, staff opinion, training course feedback, customer feedback, event feedback  - the list is endless. There are a few points to remember though to make it all work:

•    Ask the right questions – we have all seen surveys worded to elicit a certain response.
•    Don’t offer an odd number of response ratings – there is a cop out to choose average!
•    Where appropriate make sure the surveys are anonymous – the results are much better.
•    Keep them short so as not to lose interest.
•    Allow the option to make comments – helps improve the quality of feedback.

If you have read this far you will no doubt have realised that I believe surveys are a very useful tool. As far as I am concerned, ASKING PEOPLE WORKS!

This is a guest article by Ray Cohen, owner of Jackson Cohen, experts in people management.