Feedback is a hard problem but this sounds fluffy and unhelpful. Are there any tools out there that have effectively been implemented in a large organization to facilitate feedback?
The only one I've seen work at any kind of scale is anonymous peer-to-peer feedback where the company only sees aggregate numbers. You pick who rates you, but you have to pick X number from your direct group, X from groups you support, X from leaders, etc.
Doesn't help the company do anything actionable at an individual level, but does give you a more clear idea of how others see you. Which is more likely to feel actionable to you. Less threatening if there is real assurance that only you see the scores too.
Of course, you still need something for leaders so they can dole out whatever limited bonus or promotion opportunities, so it isn't a panacea.
> Of course, you still need something for leaders so they can dole out whatever limited bonus or promotion opportunities, so it isn't a panacea.
But, how do you ensure that that feedback even plays a role in one's review? In most companies I've worked, I'm skeptical. At the end of the day, one's job performance is judged by a human that is free to use or ignore all this feedback. And that human is usually your direct manager, so they often already have their own biases and self-generated feedback in their own head. "I think this direct report of mine is performing badly, but all of their feedback is good so I'll give him a raise" - said no manager ever.
Not really. Mostly because feedback by its nature is personal and doesn't scale.
There are tools to send out surveys which somewhat-anonymize feedback by methods like "at least three people must answer". It's not really helpful for anything that requires full sentences, though - you'll be able to tell fairly quickly from speech patterns who says what.
The things you can do as an org:
* Encourage a blame-free culture.[1]
* Mandate it on a regular basis (and make sure the mandate is followed), with a goal of going to "continuous" feedback.
* Give people lightweight tools to collect quick feedback
* Provide pseudo-anonymization in those tools to remove the barrier to reply
Doesn't help the company do anything actionable at an individual level, but does give you a more clear idea of how others see you. Which is more likely to feel actionable to you. Less threatening if there is real assurance that only you see the scores too.
Of course, you still need something for leaders so they can dole out whatever limited bonus or promotion opportunities, so it isn't a panacea.