The Importance Of Peer Feedback At Workplace

by Kylee Stone Jan 9,2023
Engagedly

Improving employee performance and increasing organizational productivity is a challenge for every manager. What can you do differently to improve your employee performance? Feedback about their performance is the first step, but there’s so much more you can do as a manager.

While it is safe to say that frequent feedback culture is vital for any organization, peer feedback can also affect organizational success majorly.

Peer reviews offer valuable insights into your strengths and weaknesses at work, helping you understand habits or tendencies you might be unaware of. Colleagues can identify areas for improvement and acknowledge favorable behaviors to help you grow both personally and professionally.

Here’s a list of reasons why you should build a culture of peer feedback at workplace.

Team-Building

It is quite common for employees to receive feedback from their managers and work towards improving their performance. Peer to peer feedback is also similar but better. Receiving feedback from their own peers helps employees understand their performance better and helps them create a strong culture of frequent feedback in the team.

This practice allows team members to understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses better and collectively work towards improving the team productivity.

Also read: Benefits of 360 feedback for leaders

Different Sources Of Feedback

When you receive feedback from your manager, it is based only on their perspective. A manager’s feedback usually depends on whether or not an employee reaches their set goal for a period of time. Peer feedback gives you feedback from various sources on various aspects of your work. Moreover, team members know how their peers work better than the managers do. Their solid feedback helps you realize the areas of your performance that specifically require improvement.

Reduces Bias

Employees spend most of their time with their peers and not with their managers, hence there’s more of a chance that peers know their working style and effectiveness when it comes to project reporting and deadlines. Therefore, employees might find more value in the feedback received from peers than that of managers because it is unbiased and fair.

Receiving unbiased feedback motivates employees and makes them feel valued.

Also Read: 5 Performance Management Biases To Aovid

Drives Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is one of the most important aspects of HR. When peers spend time on giving and receiving feedback from each other, it helps them build an engaging work culture.  Peer feedback is different from the feedback received from managers because peers are usually comfortable around their peers and it allows them to observe the performance of their own teammates and effectively communicate it to them.

Removes The Fear Factor

When a manager reviews your performance, there’s always a fear that your performance will be linked to your compensation because of which feedback from managers is usually utilized by employees only to get desired salary compensation and not to improve oneself.

Peer feedback is more of an informal feedback received by employees from their peers, which can be utilized solely for improving performance. This level of comfort helps employees make each other better without letting the fear factor in.

Self-evaluation And Development

Peer feedback allows employees to gain an understanding of their own work as well as the work of their peers. This allows employees to figure an effective way to utilize the skills of their peers and be productive as a team.

Asking your peers for feedback regularly helps you understand your areas of development. With peer feedback, you can also communicate your suggestions and ideas effectively. It gives an opportunity for everyone on the team to self-evaluate and develop themselves because they receive feedback from various sources.

Also Read: Everything you need to know about 360 feedback

Sometimes, all we need to be the best we can is a perspective. Most employees do not realize the reason for their poor performance because the only feedback they receive is from their managers and managers only give feedback based on the end result. When the feedback comes from peers who work with each other frequently, it is more likely that they understand your areas of development more than the manager.

 


Want to know how sharing peer feedback can help everyone in your organization?

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Kylee Stone

Kylee Stone supports the professional services team as a CX intern and psychology SME. She leverages her innate creativity with extensive background in psychology to support client experience and organizational functions. Kylee is completing her master’s degree in Industrial-Organizational psychology at the University of Missouri Science and Technology emphasizing in Applied workplace psychology and Statistical Methods.

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