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Modern companies understand that they need to give their employees positive annual feedback. Your employees need to be appreciated for the good they achieve for you, and the best way to do that is to provide your employees with positive annual feedback. Providing annual feedback to team members isn’t the easiest thing to do. Hence, we’ve written this guide to help you provide your employees with the best positive feedback. Use these 8 annual positive feedback examples to improve your annual feedback sessions.
Employee annual reviews are a norm across companies from all over the globe. Annual feedback sessions are an important opportunity for managers to review employees’ performance and assess how well they’ve done. Performance reviews for team members are important because it’s an opportunity to appreciate employees for what they do right and to inform them of what they can improve.
Annual feedback for team members is also important because it’s a chance to teach employees and help them understand their position in the organization. When done objectively, employee feedback sessions can clarify the workplace relationships between employees and improve their knowledge of the company. Effective employee feedback sessions are also important for setting employees’ future goals and motivating them to improve.
Annual feedback for team members lets employees understand themselves better, especially regarding how they’re seen in the company. Employees also get a better understanding of how their employers feel about them and what they think the employees could do to improve themselves. Therefore, the employee feedback session is an excellent opportunity to improve employee confidence and fuel further growth and confidence.
In any context, human beings like being appreciated and valued. In a professional context, this means that your company needs to properly show appreciation to your employees to convince them that their interests are best served by working with you. Your performance review for team members, therefore, is an excellent opportunity to prove to your employees that they’re fully valued by your company and that the company recognizes their contribution. So, you can use the chance to provide feedback to colleagues for improving your employee’s sense of purpose and commitment to your company, which will improve your company’s morale.
Officevibe found that 4 in 10 employees become discouraged upon receiving inadequate or no feedback. This study also found that employees benefit the most from regular feedback. This study found that 43% of highly engaged employees across different industries received weekly feedback. In contrast, only 18% of low engagement employees received weekly feedback. Even if your employees don’t actively complain about the lack of feedback, they still feel it. Generation Z and Millennials make up a large majority of the modern workforce, so you need to make sure you provide them sufficient feedback to maintain their engagement.
Constructive feedback for colleagues is an excellent way to improve communication channels among your employees and reduce tensions between them. Giving feedback to employees is the best way to show your recognition of their importance. Employees like being valued. Gaining increased value prevents employees from experiencing conflict. The benefits of an improved communication culture in your company include improvements in your company’s overall office culture and morale.
Giving annual feedback is very important, but there are also certain shortcomings involved.
Annual performance reviews take place at the same time every year. The benefit of annual feedback is that they make it easier for employees and employers to plan and prepare for the employee review session. Another benefit of annual reviews is that it reduces the disruption of your organization’s workflow.
An annual review offers a standardized route for reviewing employees. The benefit of standardization is that it improves your organization’s ability to institutionalize objective performance reviews. Standardized processes are easier to implement organization-wide, and they can save valuable time and resources for your company.
Not all levels of management can equally engage with employees. A standardized annual feedback session is one of the best ways for your company’s managers to monitor employee performance. Another benefit of annual feedback sessions is that it provides upper management with an incentive to check and monitor employee performance.
It’s important for employees to understand their performance and their position in their company. Annual reviews are the best way to provide employees with the feedback necessary to become effective and engaged.
Performance reviews also provide employees with valuable information on their strengths and weaknesses. They can use this information to improve their performance and skill sets.
Annual reviews happen relatively rarely, so they don’t provide frequent information for employees. The fact that these reviews occur so infrequently means that employees can’t receive regular feedback. Additional consequences of rare feedback periods is that it lowers the impact of each performance review for team members. Annual feedback for employees also results in employees having more relaxed attitudes towards feedback sessions.
Annual reviews can lead employees to becoming more anxious since they won’t know what to expect. This is especially the case for new employees, who do not know what to expect from an annual review that will take such a long time away. Therefore, annual performance reviews can lead employees to not having any idea how to react or prepare for feedback sessions, and this often results in much anxiety for many employees.
Annual performance reviews remove the degree of familiarity between employees and managers. Employees are less likely to be able to engage in two-way conversations with employees. Instead, your managers dominate the performance reviews, which is undesirable since it means that many of the benefits of performance reviews are lost.
Employees work for thousands of hours every year. These thousands of hours vary in terms of quality and experience. So, it is not possible for a single annual performance review to capture the full complexity of an employee’s work life. Therefore, it’s possible that your annual employee performance review is just too rarely held for it to be practical.
Ranking employees could adversely affect workplace culture if not done properly. You don’t want your employees to develop strict rivalries against one another. And, you also don’t want your employees to use your annual performance reviews as opportunities to put each other down. Having annual performance reviews makes it easier for negative aspects of performance reviews to become more common because rare reviews increase the potential damage caused to employees.
Learn from these 8 annual feedback examples to better understand how to approach employee feedback sessions.
It’s much easier for productive employees to become ‘lone stars’, and while sometimes that might be fine, a majority of the time you will need your ‘lone stars’ to become team players. The best way to make them team players is to give them positive feedback on their social skills and encourage them to work on their social skills. You can use these phrases to achieve that:
“I appreciate that you cover for your colleagues when they’re sick. That shows you understand the importance of team spirit”.
“I’m glad that you’re able to get along well with your colleagues. It shows that your suitable for more important corporate positions.”
“You have a very good habit of keeping everyone in the team updated. I really appreciate it, and I think you should keep it up!”
Milestone and important work moments are important to remember, since they represent the most important moments in an employee’s work life. You want to demonstrate to your employees that you fully recognize and understand the contributions they’ve made to the company. Doing so will encourage them to continue working harder because they’ll know that they’ll be rewarded. Use the following phrases to achieve that:
“You had a great project idea this year, and I’m very glad that you shared it with us.”
“You’ve grown greatly the past few months, and I can see that your skills are regularly getting better”
“You set very ambitious goals this quarter, and I’m extremely impressed that you achieved all of them.”
Excellent customer service is among the most important priorities of any business because your customers are what’s needed to keep your business afloat. So, it’s important that your employees are properly recognized for their good customer experience delivery abilities. You need to appreciate your employees for properly behaving with customers, and you can encourage your employees to further improve themselves by using the following feedback examples:
“We’ve seen very high customer satisfaction rates since you joined our team, and we’re extremely grateful for your high quality of service.”
“Our customers ranked your behavior very highly, and we’re extremely happy that you performed this well.”
“Thank you for always behaving politely with customers, no matter how difficult the situation gets. We really appreciate it.”
Not all employees are suitable for becoming leaders, but those that are should be highly commended for their service. You need to recognize those of your employees who have the best leadership abilities and appreciate them for it. Appreciating your employees’ leadership abilities is especially important because your company will want to inculcate strong leadership abilities long term. You can achieve that by using the following feedback examples:
“I appreciate that you often take charge of difficult situations, even when you’re not asked to. That you have a strong sense of responsibility.”
“You’re very good at managing your colleagues and encouraging them to excel.”
“The company values that you are good are inspiring your colleagues and motivating them to work better.”
It’s important for your company that all of your employees improve their abilities and develop strong growth mindsets. By having growth-minded and progressive employees is important for achieving the most company growth and having the highest profits. You need to encourage your employees to continue being growth-minded and progressive individuals. Use the following feedback examples to achieve that:
“It’s extremely impressive to see how much you’ve improved the past year. I hope you continue doing that.”
“I believe that you have an excellent mindset.”
“The company noticed that you’re constantly taking on new challenges. We’re very impressed by this, and we’d like to encourage and support you to continue doing this.”
New hires may feel intimated by existing employees because they might feel that they can’t compete with your existing employees. You need to help your employees overcome this fear by giving them feedback regarding the fact that they’re new to your company. This is a delicate process, so you need to do it carefully by using the following feedback example:
“We appreciate that you’ve devoted so much time and energy to the company, despite being relatively new here.”
“We’re very glad that you joined our company, and we’re very impressed by your performance so far.”
“We’ve almost never had any other new hires work as great as you.”
The best way to improve your employee’s morale is to give them feedback within the context of the overall work year. Your employees need to feel that their individual contributions had a big effect on the company overall. You don’t want to give them too much importance, though, because that might lead to an exaggerated sense of importance. Achieving balance is the key, and you can do it using these feedback examples:
“Your performance was splendid this year. You helped improve overall company performance considerably .”
“You achieved virtually every goal that we set out for you this year. As a result, the company benefited immensely, and we’re extremely impressed by your performance.”
“You showed a very consistent work ethic, and we’re extremely impressed with that. You helped improve our company’s work culture.”
Employees who’ve completed extra work deserve extra attention and rewards. You need to develop a progressive work culture where the most accomplished employees receive the best benefits and the most positive feedback. Your employees undoubtedly crave receiving better attention from you, and you need to provide them with that feedback to fully encourage them to work better and harder. The following feedback examples will help you achieve that:
“You worked above and beyond what was required of you, and we’re extremely grateful for that!”
“You have an excellent work ethic, and we can see that you’ll easily rise through the ranks.”
“You’re a standout example of employee excellence, and we fully appreciate you for your hard work and efforts.”
In conclusion, providing positive annual feedback is extremely important for your business. The world’s most effective companies also are the ones with the most effective feedback delivery abilities. So, use the 8 feedback examples we’ve given here to improve your company’s feedback delivery abilities.
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