How Does Real-Time Performance Feedback Improve Employee Performance?

By Michael Heller

Why are you still waiting for the annual performance review to give employees feedback? If you think about it, it's actually very ridiculous waiting a WHOLE year to give feedback on every little thing that happened months ago. My question is WHY? Annual performance reviews are becoming a thing of the past especially since Millennials are racing into the workforce and it’s time to learn real-time performance feedback is and will increase your employee performance. Millennials are active learners and NEED constant feedback to make sure they stay on track and are keeping up with the expectations that their managers may have.

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While 61% of employees say they would welcome immediate, on-the-spot feedback from bosses and peers about how they’re doing, only 24% say they get it. Meanwhile, 54% of CEOs believe they do give it. You read that right.

Something tells me CEOs, managers and employees aren’t all on the same page. It’s time to wake up, smell the coffee and dive into real-time performance feedback, managers! Realizing how this can improve your employee’s performance is a must-have to being successful and moving into the future of your business.

Keep The Motivation Up

Nobody has ever loved doing annual performance reviews. They drain you and your employees and honestly, they are time-consuming. Plus, you put in the hard work to hype up your employee with new goals and ideas for them, but that excitement lasts maybe a week? With real-time performance reviews, you can keep that excitement up and fresh. Take a look at what happens when you keep motivation flowing within your company:

• Real-time reviews help employees understand how their contributions are seen in the organization, and they make it easier for the organization to effectively recognize and reward top performance.
• Employees are more engaged in everyday work and are willing to add to their ideas and goals.
• Recognition from peers or managers serves as a reminder of individual goals. Which helps your employee stay on track and ask questions.

Continuous Learning And Development

You can learn a lot about your employees during performance reviews but it’s also easy to overlook a lot of what they do and contribute to the organization when you only have reviews once a year. Real-time reviews help you stay up to date with each of your employees and their performance. See what happens when you give them immediate feedback:

• Both managers and employees can maintain a continuous understanding. Meaning, you should always be on the same page and idea level as your employee and what to expect from each other.
• New ideas can be brought to the table and put into action when you have that constant feedback discussion. Collaboration like this only really happens if employees are given the opportunity and what better way than when giving feedback?
• A culture of feedback allows managers to recognize top performers and provide course correction early on. Catching those mistakes before it’s too late can save you time and money.

Don’t Manage, Coach Your Team

Now, I’m not saying go and throw your title or position out the window but when it comes to managing your team, you are essentially their go-to advisor and they look to you for answers and guidance. With real-time performance reviews you are a constant coach, teammate and sometimes cheerleader. Building your team up, instructing them and correcting when needed. Learn what benefits come along with coaching your team while using real-time reviews:

• Some of the latest data suggests the direct reports of managers who check in on progress towards weekly goals are up to 24 times more likely to achieve them.
• As a manager or a peer, you’re able to recognize the softer skill set in your employees when you use real-time feedback that are often overlooked or altogether forgotten during annual reviews.
• Having those regular conversations about performance and development helps change the focus to building the workforce your organization needs to be competitive both today and years from now.

Assuming you have been inspired by these reasons to use real-time performance reviews in your business, all fingers point to “yes” for using it. While it won’t be an immediate transformation overnight you can start to weave it into your company and through different departments. Whether you’re a huge corporation or even the smallest of companies, each needs real-time feedback.

The question you need to ask yourself as a CEO or manager is, “Why do I continue to put myself and employees through a long and painful annual review process when I could improve their work right now?”

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