UPWARD™: A Model for employee feedback
Usable, balanced and constructive upward feedback is difficult to achieve in the hustle of everyday work. In all workplaces there are employees who readily make known their opinions on how working conditions and work products can be improved. As a guide, the acronym UPWARD(TM) sets out the conditions that promote effective upward feedback:
Unbiased: Giving feedback is serious business. Feedback at work has the potential to make working conditions and interpersonal relationships better…or worse. To wok best, feedback should be offered and received honestly and without bias on the part of any party.
Positive: Negative feedback is often easy to give and hard to receive. Employees who present their feedback in a positive and constructive manner will communicate their ideas and concerns more effectively than those who are negative critical in their presentation.
Work-related: In all group meetings, including work, people sometimes have a tendency to carry over issues and attitudes from other settings. Effective upward feedback at work should focus on work-related problems and opportunities.
Action-oriented: Employee feedback can be made more useful when it includes suggestions on ways to improve working conditions or work products. Employees who offer tentative solutions typically have thought about a problem or opportunity area for some time before bringing it to the attention of their superiors. Even if their suggestions are, incomplete, they can be important because they demonstrate to others the benefit of recommending action-oriented suggestions, and their ideas may lead to the development of a very effective solution.
Realistic: Usable, balanced and productive feedback considers all of the resources of the organization: available financing; equipment; markets and staff talents, as well as standard personnel practices and work processes. By being realistic about organizational constraints and advantages when giving feedback, employees can help identify problems and opportunities that will have a high likelihood of being implemented.
Documented: Well documented employee feedback can provide senior managers with important information on the effectiveness of cost-cutting and other performance improvement initiatives, and can identify special training needs for supervisors and their subordinates. Suggestion boxes, employee attitude studies, 360-degree evaluations and exit interviews provide excellent opportunities for employees to document their upward feedback, often under confidential conditions.
Usable, balanced and constructive feedback usually flows from the ideas of most, not just a few workers. This level of participation often requires special encouragement on the part of managers and other supervisors.
Such encouragement should be directed towards all employees and focus on all relevant aspects of the work experience, including working conditions and work products. And employees should strive to give and document unbiased and positive feedback that is work-related, action-oriented and realistic.