Who disappears from bosses’ radars?
One in ten respondents cannot recall a situation when someone has praised them. One in five has trouble recalling when someone has criticised their work. The most ‘invisible’ employees are those in manufacturing and the public sector, as well as the oldest – in terms of age and seniority.
The second part of the nationwide survey “How do Polish managers appreciate and what forms of employee appreciation do they find most effective? “* sought to answer the question of whether and how employees of Polish companies are appreciated at work, how they perceive the means of appreciation used and how they would like to receive feedback on their work.
*Quantitative survey among 2,308 working people, conducted in May 2020 by PBS Sp. z o.o.. Nais is a partner of the survey.
Do machines provide better feedback?
In industrial production, it is the smooth running of processes that counts. Their quality is controlled automatically by checking systems. Faultlessness and execution of the set plan are taken for granted. It is easiest to see and assess human behaviour in emergency situations. How to change the reluctance of employees to give feedback in the manufacturing industry?
For motivation, negative information is better than no information at all, and it is worth giving it in the right way. Production is dominated by prevention-type jobs, i.e. jobs that are geared towards catching errors, quality control. Information about an unsatisfactory result, combined with information about what kind of losses the team or the company has suffered and what regulations or procedures have been broken, corrects the employees’ actions. In positive feedback, it is worth highlighting those behaviours that contributed to avoiding losses and what the benefits were for the team.
Do Silvers need recognition?
Although there is more and more talk in the public space about what a valuable group of employees silvers (50+ employees) are, in reality they do not experience the attention of others at work. What could be the consequences of this? The lack of feedback, especially for insecure employees at risk of redundancy, is a ticking time bomb. If a supervisor doesn’t comment on my work, is that good or bad news? The lack of data to predict the situation is very stressful and does not give space for change. Positive and negative feedback allows me to gain knowledge of how I am perceived by others. This is an important function of feedback irrespective of the age of the recipient, but different kinds of emphasis are needed for it to work well. As well as emphasising their competence, older employees should be appreciated first and foremost for the kind of people they are, the quality of the relationships they build with others. The older we get, the more important the social aspects become for our self-esteem. The group of 50+ employees is largely made up of senior managers. In Polish companies, there is no widespread habit of commenting on the work of people in such positions. Often, experienced managers can only obtain useful and unbiased feedback on their style of operation or competences from external consultants, for which the company pays dearly, let alone build any kind of relationship using this tool.
Whose role is it to give feedback?
According to the survey, praise is most often given to employees by their direct superiors (44%), followed by customers (38%) and only in third place are teammates (32%). Only 19% of those taking part in the survey receive feedback from their teammates on what they could do better and how. As the in-depth analysis shows, again, 50+ employees are particularly neglected by the team. This despite the fact that it is team members that the respondents meet with most often, and only 3% work independently. This is a big loss for the team, as team members have the fullest access to knowing how colleagues work and behave. Does this mean that we are invisible to our colleagues, interested only in our own affairs? Employees may not feel empowered to evaluate the work of others, because giving feedback is seen primarily as the role of the supervisor. For one in four respondents, communication from the supervisor is the only source of feedback on the work performed. Assessing the quality of work is possible if there is a known standard to aim for and the ability to compare the current and expected quality of work. Unclear team goals, lack of knowledge in a given area, make it difficult to adequately assess the behaviour of others, which may explain this relatively low willingness to give feedback.
Undervalued, or what?
Appreciation is the recognition of an employee as a valuable member of the team, actions that aim to reinforce the employee’s sense of worth and competence. An appreciated employee feels that he or she is in his or her place, needed, and that his or her presence in the team is justified. So we asked whether direct superiors give their subordinates this feeling. It turns out that as many as 23% of respondents cannot agree with the statement that the boss helps them feel more confident, helps them see their potential (21%) and does not enhance their sense of belonging to the team (16%). Lack of appreciation or its mismatch with the employee’s needs is associated with a low sense of meaning in their work, a sense of replaceability, reduced commitment and, as a result, a real disappearance of employees – quitting. Employees who had not received praise in the past 6 months (December 2019 – May 2020, regardless of who, were significantly less satisfied with their job than those who had been praised. A sense of appreciation is the empowerment of an employee by increasing their importance, autonomy, influence, efficiency. Appreciated employees are noticed, listened to, needed, while unappreciated employees become invisible.
Is the COVID -19 situation conducive to the ‘disappearance’ of workers?
Employees have literally disappeared from their offices. They have taken their laptops and spread out with their work in the more or less comfortable space of home. The challenge has become both to have a good flow of information about what others in the department are doing, what is going on in the team and the company as a whole, and to give each other qualitative, useful feedback. This is because it is more difficult to observe a colleague in action, how they cope with difficulties, react to stress, what their level of commitment is. In a remote working environment, we only see the effect of someone’s work, the result itself, without access to the entire context surrounding the work, including the emotional aspects. The intensity with which we want to assess someone’s work can be less clear and unambiguous. Observing someone’s face, their whole body, makes the message more credible, which is key to accepting feedback in general. I would venture to say that in Polish culture in particular. Today, with so much loosening of company relationships, the role of managers in building job satisfaction and a close relationship with employees cannot be overestimated. Bosses have faced a huge organisational and mental challenge. The model of management and leadership building is changing right now.
