Gaurav SabharwalUltimate Guide to Objective and Key results – OKR Meaning and Examples
Do you dread setting goals for your organization as you don’t see useful results? […]
Improving the performance and productivity of the employees is always a challenging goal for every leader. What can be done differently for enhancing the performance and boosting the productivity of your employees? Although feedback about their performance is indeed the first step, there’s so much more you and your organization can do. While it is no doubt that establishing a frequent feedback culture has become a necessity in today’s time, peer feedback also has a significant impact on the success of any organization.
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When done in the correct manner, peer feedback leads completely skyrockets in the performance and productivity levels of the employees, teams, and the entire organization. In the absence of peer-to-peer feedback, the performance reviews are solely dependent on the feedback of the manager and their leadership skills. Managers often see employees in a distinct light from their colleagues who spent the most amount of time with them and work with them on daily basis. The manager might not be aware of things that take place out of their purview. While peer-to-peer feedback offers the opportunity to include all the details for producing a more complete and exact picture of the performance of the employee.
Organizations are still in the procedure of establishing a fair, transparent, and open culture by revolutionizing the traditional methods with the help of technology. The modern performance management framework consists of continuous check-ins, reviews, recognition, and peer to peer review process. As there is no manual filling of forms, the processes are far more reliable and accurate. Leveraging technological advancement, peer-to-peer feedback establishes a highly positive culture where there are healthy exchanges of criticism and appreciation. It implies that the employees become more aware of their strengths, areas of improvement, and the manner in which they behave at work. With the help of peer-to-peer feedback, organizations are able to identify the future leaders to nurture them through the right training and development plans.
To review their peers effectively, employees should consider the following points:
a. Stay objective and define behavior in terms of the influence on the team, project, and the business.
b. Be as clear as possible about activities and behaviors displayed by their peers.
c. Offer ways through which a peer can develop in a specific area and build on their strengths.
d. Give both positive as well as the developmental type of feedback.
e. Ensure to highlight the traits or tasks they think of as a peer that the manager may not be aware of.
The importance of peer-to-peer feedback in the organization
As work is becoming more and more interdependent in today’s era, managers have less direct visibility of how their teams are working on a day-to-day basis. As a result, high-quality peer feedback has now become a crucial component of effective performance feedback.
1. Various sources of feedback
When your employees only receive feedback from their manager, they get the feedback that is entirely based on just one perspective. The manager’s feedback is generally dependent on whether or not the employee has attained their objectives during that quarter. On the other hand, peer feedback gives feedback from multiple sources on various factors of the work to your employee. Moreover, it is the team members who are more familiar with how their peers work better than the managers do. Being far more reliable feedback, it helps the employees to realize the area of improvement.
2. Building of teams
It is extremely common for the employees to receive feedback from their managers and take that into account for enhancing their performances. Peer-to-peer feedback is also a bit similar but even more reliable and better. Receiving feedback from their own peers helps the employees in understanding how they have been performing and results in establishing a culture of frequent feedback amongst the organizational teams. Such practice enables the team members to become familiar with each other’s strengths and weaknesses better and move unitedly towards enhancing the team’s productivity.
3. Diminishes bias
Employees spend the majority of their day with their peers and not with their managers. Therefore, it is the peers who will be knowing their style and effectiveness when it comes to project reporting and performance as per the deadlines. Hence, employees will find this type of feedback more valuable than the ones they will receive from their peers as it will be fair and unbiased. When your employees will receive such fair and unbiased feedback, it will make them feel valued.
4. Boosts employee engagement
Employee engagement is one of the most vital aspects of all types of organizations. When your employees spend time giving and receiving feedback from one another, it will enable you in building a highly engaging work environment. Peer feedback is far more different from the feedback the usual feedback they receive from managers as your employees are more comfortable around their team members and it enables them to observe the performance of one another and then communicate it to them in the most effective manner as possible.
Sometimes, all you need to change is the perspective. The majority of the employees fail to realize the reason for their bad performance as the only feedback they get is from their managers. When you establish a culture where employees give regular feedback to their team members, it helps your employees to get a better understanding of how they are performing and in what areas they really need to improve. For more assistance regarding establishing a feedback culture, contact us today.
