Tips for Providing Feedback to Remote Workers

Remote work has become the new normal for American business, and leaders must adapt their communication skills accordingly. New ways must be learned to do monthly reviews and interviews to properly keep up with our advancing technology. Expansive covers tips, tools, and strategies for providing constructive feedback to your team.

Giving Positive Feedback

Research has shown that positive feedback can motivate employees to perform better. In a study by Harvard Business Review, high-performing teams shared nearly six times more positive feedback than average teams, while low-performing teams share nearly twice as much negative feedback. As the saying goes, “you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”.

When sharing feedback, be mindful of the communication channel. Understand that praising someone over a call is inherently different from saying the same thing over an instant message. Consider tone and voice, for example. Text-based feedback relies heavily on context, punctuation, and vocabulary. Whereas voice or video-based feedback relies more on the way the message is spoken or delivered (eye contact, body language, facial expressions, etc.)

Create Slack channels (or similar communication channels) for praising team members. Too often on our messaging apps, team leaders focus on assigning tasks or following up on a project, yet forget to give praise where it’s due. Developing dedicated spaces for positive feedback can be highly motivating and rewarding.

Tactics for Corrective Feedback

Interns and veteran employees all make mistakes— it’s only human. But how leaders react and respond accordingly determines the future success of a company. Corrective feedback is crucial to overall improvement, but it can also be easier said than done.

It’s important to find out the employee’s preference for receiving feedback. Some may prefer more direct communication, such as a video call, while others may prefer a phone call. The best way to find out is to ask.

Instead of reacting emotionally when someone messes up, seek to understand as if you were a neutral third party. Ask yourself if the issue may be environmental— such as a process error or unclear instructions. Ask your team what they think may have gone wrong, so you may have varying perspectives. Finally, ask the team what could be done differently to prevent the mistake in the future.

For example, a customer may leave as a result of a bad interaction with a remote representative. The knee-jerk reaction would be to blame the representative for handling the situation poorly. But after taking a second to understand the situation, other contributing factors may arise, such as a faulty system, or lack of training.

Depending on the situation, you may also want to consider 1:1 sessions or team meetings. The former may be more appropriate for serious problems or direct, task-based feedback, whereas team meetings may be better for large, operational efficiencies under a project.

In delivering the feedback message, keep comments focused on facts and observations as to what happened and the impact it prompted. Stay focused, and don’t underestimate the value of timing. Giving corrective feedback also involves sharing the feedback quickly. It’s important to act within the “training moment” window of opportunity so the experience is still fresh in everyone’s mind.

Feedback Strategies

Here are a few different yet effective models for sharing your feedback with your team:

SBI Feedback Model

This model is a simple and direct way to act on the information that you have. SBI stands for Situation, Behavior, and Impact. Feedback is broken down as follows:

• Situation – What happened? Explain the problem clearly, noting the time, place, and other important contextual factors (“Yesterday morning during the client meeting…”)
• Behavior – How did people behave? Explain what you can observe from how people discuss or act regarding the situation. (“…You made an insensitive remark…”)
• Impact – What happened afterward? Explain the aftermath, reactions, and consequences of the situation. (“…It was frustrating because it was unkind and unprofessional.”)

SBI Feedback is useful because it breaks down the problem and effect in a clear and understandable way, and it focuses on what people can observe, rather than assumptions about the person’s character.

360-Degree Feedback

We’ve discussed the value of 360-degree feedback in the past because we genuinely believe it to be a useful way to collect feedback from all levels of a company. Unlike a single evaluation, which is subject to bias and myopia, 360-degree feedback takes into account various perspectives and relationships, providing a more comprehensive evaluation in the end.

How does it work? It starts with a survey that asks a person to evaluate the subject on a variety of metrics— performance, behavior, strengths and weaknesses, skills, and goals.

Then, a leader must observe the various interactions the subject has— from leaders and supervisors to colleagues and customers. Once there is a full list, the survey can be sent to each individual.

Personal Coaching

More often than not, human error can be attributed to poor communication and training. Instead of being reactive and giving feedback after something happens, coaches can be proactive and seek out problems before they arise. They can often spot patterns and red flags before anyone else because they’ve been there before.

Another benefit of coaching is the additional attention given to each individual. Coaches are in a better position to ask questions about why someone did something, rather than what they did wrong. That’s because coaches are able to develop closer relationships with a subject than someone conducting an evaluation.

Since remote and hybrid work is here to stay, then we must also develop new practices and techniques for communicating more effectively. In the past, leaders were limited to phone calls and emails, but today video conferencing has made conversations more interactive than ever before. New models are being developed on how individuals share and receive feedback, providing more context and nuance to human interactions.

Remote work doesn’t have to feel remote at all. All the team needs are systems to share constructive feedback clearly, quickly, and consistently. You would be amazed at how much it can affect a business. in a positive way!