[2023-01-06] Manager's guide to giving written feedback

Given the rise of working from home and the prospect of continued hybrid work arrangements for many knowledge workers, it's timely to dust off a Café Jen post on how managers can provide effective written feedback to employees on their outputs.

In 2014, through a consultation with employees in the organization in which I worked at the time, we heard that employees wanted senior management to:
  • provide feedback directly to the working level when possible,
  • be constructive and positive in their comments, and
  • make it clear why changes were made to their work so that employees could avoid making the same mistakes in future.
In response, I wrote a post providing a "Manager’s guide to giving written feedback."

Why written feedback? Because employees regularly received written comments on their work, whether hand-written notes on a hard copy, remarks on an electronic copy of their document, or an email. It was less common for staff to receive verbal input, provided face to face. Employees told us that the written feedback was sometimes constructive, sometimes bewildering; occasionally timely, too often frustratingly slow; at times welcomed, at others times dreaded. (I can only imagine that the challenges associated with giving and receiving feedback have increased as knowledge workers and managers have spent so much time working remotely in the past few years.)

Back in 2014, I struggled to find an existing protocol for providing remarks in writing to staff on their work. That surprised me given what we were hearing about the importance of feedback to employees' learning and development. So I set out to develop a collection of tips for providing comments in writing on written work, which is one of the most common ways in which managers give direction to staff.

The most helpful information I came across was advice to teachers administering online courses. Here are the best tips I found.

  1. Be timely. Provide feedback as quickly as possible because the longer it takes you to get back to your employees, the more likely they are to simply make a few changes and miss the learning opportunity. Also the sooner you provide input, the more time they have to do something with their document before the final deadline.
  2. Provide high-level feedback on the first draft. If there’s enough time for multiple drafts, provide overall comments on the first draft, enabling employees to use your review to create a stronger second version.
  3. Give examples. Provide models of good writing—briefing notes, presentations, reports—that your employees can emulate.
  4. Give verbal feedback too. If possible, complement written observations with verbal reactions. This helps to avoid misinterpretation of your written comments. Ask your employees to take notes during these meetings, whether face-to-face, via videoconferencing or over the phone.
  5. Be positive. The purpose of feedback is to improve performance; studies show that when comments are predominantly negative, effort and achievement are diminished. Acknowledge what your employees did well, identify what they need to improve, and explain how they can make this improvement.
  6. Make your changes visible. Use track changes to show employees what modifications you made, and comments to provide a rationale for changes and to ask questions. If you don't have time to track or comment on all changes, pick the most significant ones to highlight.
  7. Choose your words carefully. Avoid words that are destructive or that call into question employees’ judgement (e.g., "why did you include this?").
  8. Be concrete. Avoid asking a long list of questions or suggesting employees consider or think about something. Instead, provide at least one concrete suggestion of something they can do to improve the next draft.
  9. Encourage peer review. Suggest that employees review each other's drafts. This not only helps them to catch errors before they send their documents to you, but also gets employees used to receiving and giving feedback.
  10. Invite others to provide feedback. If employees are sensitive to your critiques, ask another manager to also provide observations. A fellow manager may see what you don't (e.g., a positive start to build on) or have a more effective way to give comments.
  11. Make employees accountable. For repeated errors (e.g., inconsistent use of abbreviations), note the first two instances, but ask them to find the others.
  12. Share resources. Provide links to resources that will help your employees improve their grammar and writing style, such as the Government of Canada's writing tools and language resources.
  13. Track common errors. Keep a list of repeated mistakes and share these with all employees (without attribution, of course).
  14. Share your writing strategies. Explain to employees what writing strategies you have learned and adopted over the years, for example, writing multiple drafts, reading paragraphs out loud, and asking someone else to proofread your work.

It is difficult for managers to get better at providing written comments to their employees because they often don't see how their remarks are received and interpreted. Leaving the door open for employees to seek follow-up guidance or to provide their own assessment of how clear and helpful your written feedback was would no doubt help both parties get the most out of the review process.