When your employees complete a task or perform a job, giving them feedback is incredibly important. Without proper feedback, they won’t know how they have done or how their performance could be improved. Feedback is simply information that you give as a reaction to a task performed by a person.

In turn, feedback is used by the employees to figure out how they can improve on the job. Giving positive feedback is generally quite easy; you can easily find the words to tell someone that they have done their job well. It’s also easy to congratulate an employee when they meet their sales targets.

When all is going well, complacency often sets in and managers are often quite open to giving praise. However, what you need to do is to offer constructive feedback instead of simply heaping praise on your employees. Just as with everything else, it’s all about practice when giving feedback.

Feedback Gets Better with Practice

The more you give, the better you will get at it. Feedback should be given consistently, and it should be spontaneous. If employees know that they are going to get feedback at a specific time, it’s going to take the spontaneity out of it and the feedback won’t have a strong impact.

When delivered in the right manner, constructive feedback can be one of the best ways to improve employee morale. It not only reinforces positive behavior, but it also rectifies any negative performance traits and, above all, ensures that the culture in your workplace remains strong.

But how do you give constructive feedback? How do you make sure that the constructive feedback that you give is not misconstrued and taken as harsh criticism by the employee? You want to make sure that the feedback you give is taken positively by your employees. Here are some popular constructive feedback examples to help you out.

Feedback When Employees Speak Over Another

A common issue that managers face in the modern work environment is when employees speak over others in meetings. It can often come off as overbearing and may seem rude. However, many employees will counter that by saying that this speaks about their leadership qualities and their overall passion for the company. When giving out constructive feedback, you just need to appeal to their enthusiastic nature.

For instance, you could just tell them that you understand they are excited about the project, but in some situations, your excitement gets the better of you and prevents others from bringing new ideas to the meeting. More importantly, ask them if they noticed this as well.

Asking them to make a bit of space for others in meetings is important. Tell them that in order for their career to develop properly, they are going to have to work tightly with the rest of the team and value their ideas as well. Ask for their response to the situation, and you will be able to get them to stop speaking over others.

Feedback for Poor Communication Skills

If an employee gets hesitant when approaching you with a question or a major obstacle that they are facing, it can be difficult to communicate with them properly. You need to encourage communication in the workplace by giving your employees the right feedback. More importantly, you need to respond in a positive manner to any update that you get because that’s going to encourage them to give more feedback.

For instance, you could tell them that you really appreciate that they kept them up to date on the project during the week. You could give the positive points that it helped you arrange matters with the stakeholders, and then encourage them to give you more updates. Tell them how their effective communication is helping you and the company in general.

Secondly, you can also ask them about the progress of a specific project. Tell them that if they have any problems, you would like to know them immediately. Or, you could just ask them about giving you regular updates on a daily basis for instance.

Constructive Feedback About Time Management and Handling Deadlines

Time management is a critical soft skill to have in the workplace. Without proper time management, the work could be disorganized and important deadlines will be missed. Therefore, it’s important that you offer constructive feedback to employees on how to manage their time properly.

For instance, you could tell them that they have missed several deadlines in the past few weeks or months. Let them know that the environment is generally fast-paced, and that you are willing to work with them on their time management strategy or figure out how to optimize their performance management.

Secondly, if an employee comes to you and tells them that they are running behind on a project, you can just tell them that you are willing to look at the goals and see how they are spending their time. You can work together with them to identify any efficiencies and then work out the best way to proceed further.

How to Give Feedback to an Employee Who Misses Their Goals

There are going to be times when an employee misses their goals and fails to achieve their targets. This is quite possible and can happen from time to time. The aim is not to bring that employee down, but to give them constructive feedback to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

You need to make sure that you acknowledge their hard work and the fact that they tried hard, and then reframe it to ensure that it serves as a learning experience for that particular employee. Here’s a pretty good example of how you can turn feedback regarding a missed goal into something constructive that the employee is going to learn from.

For instance, you could tell them that the work they have done was fantastic and it helped them grow. Highlight their positive points, and then tell them about the goals that they missed. Above all, reassure them that it’s okay to miss goals from time to time. Tell them that you understand that it can be a bit discouraging, so this is an opportunity that they can use to work on building their focus and ensure that they do not miss goals again.

These are just some of the most common examples of constructive feedback and how it affects employee morale.