Author: nGAGE Team

Do You Really Need Employee Engagement Software?

Posted on by nGAGE Team

From startup to megacorporation, employee engagement software has become a necessity to keep up with workplace engagement. This is especially true of businesses with hybrid work models and remote employees. The modern workplace requires modern solutions.

To remain enthusiastic about their jobs, employees need to be engaged with as well. So, it’s not enough to promise that their voices will be heard and contributions will be noticed once a year. That’s why annual reviews and surveys fall short where software succeeds.

Software puts the spotlight on your workers every single day.

What is Employee Engagement Software?

Employee engagement software is a platform that helps businesses manage, support, and evaluate their staff. Through a wide range of tools, it aims to encourage feedback, streamline administrative busywork, and improve overall engagement.

That means you can say goodbye to stacks of paperwork and chasing down employees during appraisal season.

You can even make recognition, reward, and morale a regular part of the workday. The right platform will transform the way you and your employees think about work.

Benefits of Automating Employee Engagement Initiatives

More than simply measuring engagement, employee engagement platforms make your work environment a place where people feel connected and empowered.

These are just four of the many ways your people management strategy will improve with automated employee engagement.

Enables Timely Feedback

Annual appraisals alone aren’t cutting it anymore. According to Corporate Executive Board, 77% of HR executives don’t even think performance reviews accurately represent the people they’re about.

A continuous feedback loop ensures employees always know how their job performance is adding up. And this process couldn’t be easier with a platform that tracks the feedback they’ve received.

Increases Transparency

Employee engagement software gives employees a space to speak up about concerns – and it prompts managers to show them that their voices are heard. Open, 360-degree feedback keeps leaders as accountable as employees, encouraging transparency and trust.

Improves Productivity

When HR is constantly monitoring engagement through software, they can meet employees’ demands quickly and compassionately.

The more engaged your employees are, the more invested they’ll be in their work and the company’s goals. That’s why a loyal workforce is a productive workforce.

Builds Workplace Rituals

It’s easy for company culture to fall by the wayside when it isn’t constantly enforced. Even if you have a few role model employees, putting them on a pedestal may only disengage employees who fall short.

Software isn’t a helicopter boss hounding you for results, it’s simply automated. Reminders and quotas ensure that engagement initiatives become workplace rituals, which in turn nurtures teamwork and collaboration.

Top 5 Features to Look For in Employee Engagement Software

No two employee engagement apps are the same, so it’s important to consider what will work best for your business.

Here are the five most common features you’ll find on the market and what they can do for you.

1) Feedback Systems

Feedback is the secret sauce of a healthy workplace, and employees are hungry for it. They even welcome negative feedback when it’s delivered well. It’s the key to career development and helps employees figure out exactly how they can improve.

Every employee engagement platform worth its salt has feedback channels to take advantage of that. They not only give employees direction for growth but also allow managers to stay on top of workplace satisfaction.

You can expect the following benefits from feedback features –

  • Meaningful Feedback – Handy templates, categories, and rating systems ensure that feedback is as specific and actionable as possible.
  • Psychological Safety – Anonymous mode gives employees the freedom to go incognito if they’re worried about incurring bias or repercussions.
  • Feedback Culture – Feedback quotas and reminders keep the wheel turning, making feedback an important part of team KPIs.

2) Recognition and Reward

Every employee wants to know they’re making a difference in their organization. In fact, 90% of employees agree that recognition for their hard work inspires them to work even harder.

Celebrating employee achievements is a surefire way to raise morale in your workplace. Employee engagement software allows you to give credit where credit’s due with ranking systems and newsfeeds.

But the best incentive is reward. Gamifying milestones with points that can be cashed in for real prizes adds a fresh, fun spin on the daily grind.

These features have wide-reaching impacts for your bottom line –

  • Friendly Competition – Leaderboards fuel the natural human desire to win, without punishing anyone for coming last.
  • High-Performing Workforce – When motivated by reward and recognition, employees push their performance to the limit.
  • Lower Turnover – Engaged, high-morale employees are less likely to leave your company in search of more fulfilling work (and more appreciative colleagues).

3) Data Analytics and Insights

The best employee engagement software consolidates employee data and feedback into AI-powered reports. Through concise graphs, charts, and insights, they show the big picture impacts of the data on your organizational goals.

Managers can use these reports to understand performance trajectory, engagement metrics, and team dynamics. This enables them to make informed decisions about your employee engagement strategies.

Life’s simpler with automation, as evidenced by these benefits –

  • Data-Driven Decisions – When company-wide data is readily available, there’s no need for guesswork on when and how to make changes.
  • Less Paperwork – Automating analytics takes some of the pressure off your HR team, saving on time and resources.
  • Responsive Support – Real-time insights eliminate delays in identifying and dealing with issues, allowing managers to be responsive to their team’s needs.

4) Integration Capabilities

Your employee engagement platform shouldn’t require you to throw out the systems that have been working for you. Seamless integration capabilities give you the freedom to synchronize and export data from one software to another.

So, make sure your employee engagement solution will play nice with all the other apps in your toolbox. That counts double for your HR management tool, which can benefit from the data your employee engagement software collects.

Spare yourself some time and frustration with these perks –

  • Easier Transition – Reduce the learning curve for your HR team by choosing an app that works with programs they already know.
  • Personalized Experience – Mix and match engagement, communication, productivity, HRM, and performance management tools to fully customize your system.
  • Up-to-Date Information – Automatic data transfer takes administrative chores off your plate that HR would otherwise have to do manually.

5) Goal-Setting

While many employee engagement apps include goal-setting functions, it’s important to note that these are specifically aspects of performance management. But setting goals is an essential part of team cohesion that goes hand in hand with engagement.

Planning and achieving OKRs and KPIs is even more collaborative with integrated feedback and recognition.

These tools are perfect for the following –

  • Progress-Tracking – Keep everyone on the same page when it comes to team progress, objectives, and expectations.
  • Motivation – With just a few clicks, use recognition features to celebrate teammates’ successes and give feedback on exceptional or underwhelming performance.
  • Growth and Development – Beyond immediate goals, engage with your employees’ futures by giving them a platform to set up career path goals.

Like What You’re Hearing?

If you’re looking for the perfect software for employee engagement in your company, you’ve found it.

Experience engagement, productivity, growth, and feedback all in one easy-to-use app. With nGAGE powering your business, you can supercharge your workflow and build a loyal, open company culture.

Check out our free demo for a taste of what you can do with nGAGE at the helm!

7 Employee Growth and Development Ideas for 2025

Posted on by nGAGE Team

With the new year on the horizon, are you cooking up employee growth and development ideas yet? If not, you should be.

The Great Resignation brought employee dissatisfaction to the fore, but many employers have struggled to find a solution.

The truth is, employees are increasingly looking for meaning and purpose in their work. They seek opportunities to learn, grow, and achieve personal goals – and they seek an environment that provides those opportunities.

What is Employee Growth and Development?

Employee development refers to your workers’ learning journey as they build new skills and diversify their experiences. It’s more than just training – it’s how your employees work toward the role they envision for themselves at your company.

With the right opportunities, employees can develop professional competencies, adapt to new tech and tools, and overcome more challenges. The resulting performance boost is a win-win for everyone.

But learning doesn’t stop at skills specific to your employees’ current or aspirational roles. Soft skills like communication, problem-solving, and self-motivation are an asset to any task, setting up your employees for long-term success.

Why is Employee Growth and Development Important?

Employee development pathways allow workers to reach their full potential, and by and large, employees want that professional momentum.

You’d think businesses would leap at the chance to upskill their workforce. But 74% of workers feel that they’re held back by a lack of employee opportunities for growth in their workplace.

Investing in your employees’ development will give you the edge in these four major areas –

Training Future Managers

You don’t need to win your next generation of leaders in the rat race of today’s job market. Building leadership pathways within your organization offers unique benefits that may even outweigh recruitment, as it –

  • Provides upward trajectory for your employees, driving them to work harder and better
  • Promotes individuals who already know and understand your team
  • Allows you to develop your leaders around company values, practices, and processes

Increasing Employee Engagement

Employee growth is one of the key drivers of employee engagement in your workforce. It only makes sense – nobody is content when they feel like their career is going nowhere.

On the other hand, employees are more engaged by work that pushes them to adapt and evolve. The more supported and valued they feel, the more motivated they are to innovate, collaborate, and take initiative.

Attracting Top Talent

It should come as no surprise that job-seekers want to join a company that values their growth. If you don’t advertise that yours will do just that, you’re losing out on the best talent in the market.

Clear employee development pathways let prospective hires know whether your company will help them achieve their dream role. Unless they see a bright future with you, they’ll look elsewhere.

Reducing Turnover

Like many employers after the Great Resignation, you’re probably looking for ways to keep your employees happy where they are.

People stay longer at companies that prioritize employee development, according to LinkedIn’s 2019 Workplace Learning Report. With lower turnover, you’ll spend less on recruitment. So, capitalizing on this secret to retention will help you save money in the long run.

7 Ways to Boost Employee Growth and Development

Now to get to the crux of the issue: coming up with employee growth and development ideas.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, mixing and tailoring a few different methods is a great place to start. Collect regular feedback to keep your finger on the pulse of your employees’ engagement and adjust as you go.

These seven tried-and-true strategies are guaranteed to produce results.

1) Offer Training Opportunities

It goes without saying that employees can’t develop without avenues for learning.

Training programs are a staple of a successful learning culture, expanding your employees’ specializations. They open doors to new tasks and roles that demand different capabilities.

As your employees build more skills, their independence and value within your organization rise. Even soft skills training can return up to 250% on investment within a year.

2) Start a Mentoring Program

Mentoring programs are among the easiest and most cost-effective employee growth and development ideas to implement. New hires can take advantage of experienced employees’ expertise right off the bat with in-depth learning.

There’s essential teamwork involved: the mentor becomes a better teacher, and the mentee becomes a better learner. It’s a great way to foster mutual understanding between different generations of workers.

3) Support Horizontal Movement

Upward isn’t the only way forward. You can support your employees’ career growth by allowing them to move into lateral roles as well.

With this approach, you can keep employees who outgrow their current role but don’t want to move into management. A new direction may be a better fit for their developmental goals.

Horizontal movement is especially beneficial for future managers. Through hands-on experience, employees can learn how different roles work together to contribute to the company’s goals.

4) Help with Career Planning

All employee growth and development ideas fall flat if your employees don’t know what they’re working toward.

Dedicate annual one-on-one meetings to employee career path planning. Lay out what milestones they’re trying to hit and what experiences are necessary for the next step in their career.

The freedom to dictate your own vision of success is a powerful motivating force. Show employees how their self-made goals align with your company’s goals, and they’ll feel that their role empowers them.

5) Provide Continuous Feedback

Feedback is the vehicle for growth, both personal and professional. A system of regular, continuous feedback ensures your employees are always improving and moving toward their development goals.

But the key is to keep feedback specific, constructive, and actionable. Meaningful performance insights are a valuable tool for building upon strengths and weaknesses and preparing for future tasks.

6) Hold Regular Workshops

A cost-effective idea for distributing expertise throughout your company is to have your employees teach each other. Volunteer-run workshops and seminars keep the knowledge mill churning.

The facilitator gets to pick the topic, play around with the execution, and develop valuable communication skills to boot. But if that’s not enough incentive, you can sweeten the deal with a small reward or a lesson-ranking system.

7) Gamify Development

People are naturally motivated by competition, gratification, and challenge. You can take advantage of that by turning employee growth and development into a game.

The gamification strategy uses point-based systems, leaderboards, and real rewards to make professional development fun. They provide a massive boost not only to engagement but also to knowledge retention, improving overall performance.

If done right, gamification can even make learning addictive. Your employees won’t want to stop!

It’s Time to Prioritize Employee Growth

But don’t be daunted by the number of options at your disposal. If you want to take the fastest route to an effective development strategy, offload some of the busywork to software.

With integrated engagement and productivity tools, nGAGE can give your company a solid foundation for employee growth.

  • Introduce gamification to your workplace with nGAGE’s challenges and rewards program.
  • Implement a feedback quota and use easy templates to make feedback a regular professional habit.
  • Track employee attendance productivity so you can help out where needed and give recognition where it’s due.

Try out nGAGE today and make 2025 your best year for employee growth and development.

How to Increase Employee Productivity – 7 Practical Strategies

Posted on by nGAGE Team

If your company’s performance has hit a disappointing plateau, you’re likely wondering how to increase employee productivity.

Here’s a little secret: most office workers are productive for less than three hours a day. It’s no surprise that a workforce of part-timers struggles to meet expected performance levels.

It takes a good company-wide strategy to maximize your employees’ strengths and motivate them to work hard every day. Luckily, this guide is just what you need to get the ball rolling.

What is Employee Productivity?

Put simply, employee productivity measures how much work an employee is doing on company time. It’s an easy way to keep track of your employees’ workflow in terms of –

  • Efficiency – how well they’re using their time
  • Quality – whether their work meets expectations
  • Quantity – how many tasks they can get done

But there’s more to it than that.

Monitoring employee productivity provides insight into whether your company can meet its goals. Think of this metric as your company’s engine – when it breaks down, the business can’t run. Inversely, high productivity means your business can expand faster than ever.

Why Improve Employee Productivity?

There’s no question that a high-performing workforce is necessary for your business to thrive. But is it worth it to figure out how to increase employee productivity?

It may be tempting to write off unproductive employees and fill their roles with motivated candidates. However, investing in current employees may be more cost-efficient than hoping new ones will perform better.

There’s much to be gained from taking charge of your employees’ productivity –

  • More Profitable Workforce – Efficiency travels upward. An efficient team makes the whole organization perform better overall. The more productive your employees, the more their work pays for the resources you’ve devoted to them.
  • Capacity for Innovation – When your employees aren’t struggling to get through the minimum, they have mental energy to spare for creative problem-solving. Innovators drive evolution in your company – they’re your first line of defense against stagnation.
  • Better Work Relationships – Conflict is inevitable when teammates feel that some are working harder than others. An effective employee productivity strategy ensures that everyone is contributing equally. And everyone gets along better with people they can trust.
  • Lower Turnover Rates – Most reasons for low productivity revolve around dissatisfied employees. A highly motivated, highly engaged workforce is less likely to leave in search of better prospects. Higher retention rates save you money and resources in the long run.
  • Competitive Edge – Employees on their A game consistently work fast, deliver quality, and embody company values, making your business look good. Better yet, a full team of productive employees can meet market demands quicker than competitors, giving you a head start.

7 Strategies to Increase Employee Productivity

As convincing as those points are, you know it’s no simple task to rework your strategy from the ground up. But knowing where to focus your efforts is half the battle.

These seven tips will show you how to increase employee productivity in your company.

1) Track Employee Productivity

The days of manually crunching numbers once a year for performance reviews have long passed. If you’re not using software to track productivity, you’re losing out on technology that successful companies have relied on for years.

An employee productivity tracker makes your workers’ activity transparent. Analyzing productivity data in real time, these apps help you optimize your employees’ performance with ease. When problems crop up, managers can see exactly where things are going wrong and provide immediate support.

Not only do productivity trackers keep everyone updated, but they also motivate employees to put their best foot forward.

2) Set Performance Goals and Milestones

Without a concrete, specific action plan, your employees may not understand what’s expected of them. That’s why setting performance goals is a crucial step in how to increase employee productivity.

To foster innovation, initiative, and realistic expectations, empower your team to create their own KPIs and SMART goals. Putting employees in the pilot seat gives them the freedom to do the job they love – with full accountability.

3) Implement Continuous Feedback

Timely feedback can make all the difference in improving employee productivity. It’s hard to know your strengths and weaknesses when they’re constantly evolving and the last feedback you received was months ago. All your employees need is a bit of guidance to show they’re on the right track.

A continuous feedback loop is the perfect strategy for the job. Through regular one-on-one and group meetings, managers and their teams can stay on top of performance goals.

4) Train Better Managers

Improvement doesn’t fall only on your employees’ shoulders, though. Don’t dismiss the possibility that your managers may be holding them back.

Good managers know how to increase employee productivity and build good relationships with their team. But it’s a company effort to bring your managers up to that level.

Regular pulse surveys will let your managers know when employee motivation is flagging. Using the results, you can create actionable steps and offer training opportunities to build your managers’ leadership skills.

5) Provide Opportunities for Growth

Training programs are a straightforward way to increase employee productivity, closing skill and knowledge gaps in your team.

Courses and workshops on the latest tech and industry standards will keep your employees up to date. But you can also support the development of soft skills like time management, organization, and communication.

Invest in your employees’ futures – they’ll thank you for it by doing their jobs better.

6) Reduce Time-Wasters

No discussion on how to increase employee productivity is complete without mentioning the bane of all work: distractions.

It may sound like a no-brainer, but these accumulating obstacles can affect your workforce in ways you don’t expect. Emails, messages, and poorly timed meetings can pull your employees out of the zone instantly. And after an interruption, it takes 23 minutes to refocus on average.

If your office is a hive of activity, encourage teams to turn off notifications when they need to lock in. Be efficient and economical with meetings – every moment in a meeting is one where your employees aren’t making progress.

7) Boost Employee Engagement

This one shouldn’t surprise you. If you’re stumped on how to increase employee productivity, look closely at how your employees feel about their work.

According to Gallup, low employee engagement can increase turnover by up to 43%. If your employees aren’t motivated or passionate about the work they do for you, they’ll look somewhere else. So, make it a priority to improve your employees’ experience in the workplace.

But don’t just guess what they want. Use surveys, meetings, or continuous improvement boards to ask them directly and democratically.

Upgrade Your Employee Productivity Today

The secret for how to increase employee productivity is at your fingertips. nGAGE at Work will help you process productivity data in real time, and it won’t stop there. It’s high time to automate every aspect of your performance management strategy.

Take the plunge now and get ready to unlock your workforce’s full potential.

Conversations, Feedback, Recognition – A Comprehensive Guide

Posted on by nGAGE Team

In the past five years, the hybrid work model has become the new normal. But how do you stay connected with employees and keep track of performance in a virtual workplace? Conversations, feedback, and recognition (CFR) is the performance management tool for the job.

Reaching objectives and key results (OKRs) takes transparency between teammates and management. In his book Measure What Matters, John Doerr describes CFR as the team communication that makes OKRs achievable.

What is Conversations, Feedback, and Recognition?

CFR is a performance management model that makes feedback a regular workplace ritual. It provides a platform for setting and achieving goals with three components:

  • Conversations – frequent, open communication between employee and manager, focused on progress toward goals
  • Feedback – regular evaluations that keep teams on track, working together, and striving for growth
  • Recognition – public and private praise of a job well done, rewarding employees for their hard work

Unlike annual performance reviews, conversations, feedback, and recognition are directly linked to the OKR cycle.

Routine conversations serve as progress reports. They keep OKRs public, performance transparent, and workflow reflexive. Managers stay engaged with their team’s goals, helping them reflect on milestones and obstacles.

A well-established feedback culture ensures that the workforce is dedicated to continuous improvement. It’s a two-way exchange. Both managers and employees share actionable ideas and provide timely, constructive guidance.

It’s important to celebrate your employees’ wins, too. Visible progress and meaningful contributions should be recognized in regular meetings. Their success is your success.

What are the Benefits of Conversations, Feedback, and Recognition?

Adopting a new feedback model takes time and resources – what makes conversations, feedback, and recognition worth the effort?

There’s much to be gained from a human-centric approach to goal-setting. CFR recognizes that employees are an organization’s most vital asset – it prioritizes individual growth, accountability, and morale.

These are the results.

Continuous Feedback

Rather than limiting in-depth feedback to annual performance reviews, CFR ensures a constant cycle of feedback and growth.

Frequent self-reflective discussions help managers stay on top of employees’ strengths and weaknesses. This allows the company to be responsive in providing workshops and training opportunities.

Remote Employee Support

In a hybrid workplace, it’s no easy task to bring everyone together for in-person performance reviews. For fully remote employees, it may even be impossible.

The CFR model is built around interactions that can happen virtually. Whether it’s shared during a Zoom meeting or dropped over text, frequent feedback keeps everyone on the same page.

Employee feedback software offers an even simpler channel, allowing employees to leave concise, meaningful reviews for anyone, at any time.

Feedback Culture

In an effective conversation, feedback, and recognition model, everyone is a participant. All employees engage in constructive, goal-oriented conversations until the routine becomes a habit.

Long-lasting culture is founded on group habits. So, as people get better at giving, receiving, and implementing feedback, a healthy feedback culture soon follows. And when employees feel central to the improvement of their company, engagement levels rise.

Peer-to-Peer Learning

Peer reviews allow employees to learn from and teach their colleagues. Good feedback offers potential solutions, which can help teammates reorient their goals. A problem shared is a problem halved.

Collaborative learning increases trust, as individuals naturally approach teammates who push them to improve.

Better Relationships

Communication is key to building strong relationships. It’s no surprise that employees want to connect with their managers and benefit from regular peer feedback.

Sharing frequent feedback and praise is a sign that you’re paying attention – the more specific you are, the more understood the recipient will feel. Teammates who understand each other collaborate more effectively and run into fewer conflicts.

When managers routinely invite and implement feedback, they build better relationships with their employees too.

6 Strategies for Effective Conversations, Feedback, and Recognition

Establishing a healthy feedback culture takes hard work from everyone involved. To ensure the value outweighs the challenge, here are six strategies for a smoother transition to the CFR model.

1. Combine CFR with OKRs

Conversations, feedback, and recognition should always be goal-focused, not an excuse to air grievances or give false praise. Make the most of your time in meetings by having guided discussions and keeping feedback on topic.

The simplest way to do this is to revolve the conversation around forward-thinking questions such as:

  • “How are your OKRs going?”
  • “What challenges are you facing?”
  •  “How can I help you reach your goals?”

2. Create a Routine

Continuous feedback models quickly fall apart without a routine. Many employees and managers find feedback exchange intimidating, especially with the fanfare surrounding performance reviews.

So make a habit of it. Integrate conversations, feedback, and recognition into the regular workday. Schedule feedback sessions, weekly check-ins, and one-on-ones to keep everyone in the loop and striving for improvement.

3. Establish Clear Expectations

It’s important to set the company standard for what conversations, feedback, and recognition should look like.

There should be no confusion about:

  • when it’s appropriate to give feedback and to whom,
  • how to phrase it fairly and constructively,
  • why you’re giving it, and
  • how acting on it will help company or team goals.

4. Implement Feedback Transparently

If managers leave employee feedback unanswered for too long, they risk creating a culture of “rules for thee but not for me.” Leadership should be prepared to act on feedback promptly – just as they expect employees to.

Inform employees how and when their feedback will be implemented. Let them know what suggestions aren’t achievable and why. If employees feel their feedback isn’t valued, they’ll stop giving it.

5. Make Feedback Safe

Many employees are reluctant to share upward feedback for fear of repercussions. In a healthy feedback culture, all employees must feel safe to voice their concerns.

Not everyone will be ready to give or receive continuous feedback right away. But that’s what conversations are for. Be respectful and flexible – instead of forcing the issue, ask them how the process could be more comfortable for them.

6. Diversify Your Feedback Channels

Not everyone is comfortable exchanging feedback the same way. Fortunately, there are many possible mediums for it:

  • Text vs. face-to-face
  • Group vs. one-on-one
  • Anonymous vs. identified

Quicker, more visual feedback can make the process more engaging. Employee feedback software allows employees to give feedback online in just a few clicks.

And there’s no reason to toss out traditional performance reviews. Through monitoring trends and highlighting growth, CFR is ideal for tracking performance trajectory. That leads to a far more comprehensive end-of-year evaluation.

Looking to Simplify Your CFR?

The conversations, feedback, and recognition model is the most effective way to link feedback to the OKR cycle. But it isn’t always easy to keep track of and make time for feedback during regular meetings.

With nGAGE powering your CFR, your employees can share in-the-moment feedback and recognition wherever they are. It will:

  • Collect feedback all in one place for a fully automated 360-degree evaluation.
  • Let employees know when they’re falling behind on their contributions.
  • Use templates and rating systems to keep the feedback focused.

Leave the administrative tasks to nGAGE so you can concentrate on reaching your goals.

Continuous Feedback Loop: Definition, Importance & Strategies

Posted on by nGAGE Team

As business Agility becomes the standard, many companies are starting to adopt the “continuous feedback loop” model of performance evaluation. But what does that mean, and how does it compare to traditional annual performance reviews?

The truth is that annual reviews are just too few and far between to be effective or efficient.

Studies have shown that employees want specific, frequent, and actionable feedback. When an annual review rolls around, it’s often far too late to fix the problems that affected performance.

Instead of focusing on how last year’s performance was lacking, continuous feedback loops look at what changes can be made now.

What Is a Continuous Feedback Loop?

The continuous feedback loop is a strategy for exchanging feedback and putting it into practice on a regular basis.

Gone is the lag time between one performance review and the next. Instead, routine one-on-ones and group check-ins follow up on team members’ progress in reaching their performance goals.

This iterative model ensures that every piece of feedback is understood, acted on, and used to drive positive change. It creates a highly skilled, Agile workforce that can quickly adapt to new challenges.

But continuous feedback isn’t just managers making better workers out of their employees. It’s a two-way conversation – employees also offer their input to management, making a better work environment for themselves. In a healthy feedback culture, everyone benefits.

When there’s a continuous flow of ideas, suggestions, and solutions, a growth mindset naturally follows. So, rather than a source of stress, giving and receiving feedback becomes a valued workplace ritual.

How Important Is a Continuous Feedback Cycle?

In a continuous feedback cycle, your company – and the individuals who make it possible – never stop evolving.

Managers in touch with their teams’ strengths and weaknesses can better respond to their needs when it counts. Employees keep superiors accountable for issues in systems and communication.

The result is a system of continuous learning that puts people and their goals first.

It comes with many benefits – here are just a few that a continuous feedback loop can bring to your company.

Boost Employee Development

It goes without saying that continuous feedback is designed to generate continuous improvement.

Employees who are constantly building skills and optimizing their workflow become the best possible people for their roles. When they know what’s needed, they can adapt to their role as it evolves. That means their value in your company is always on the rise.

Continuous feedback loops keep managers attentive and responsive to employees’ learning and development.

Increase Employee Engagement

Employees thrive on feedback, whether positive of negative, and they tend to want more of it than they’re given. Taking advantage of that fact yields better outcomes for their performance and their job satisfaction. It’s a win-win.

But don’t stop at feedback for employees.

When so many workers resign because they feel their feedback isn’t valued, it’s clear that power imbalance damages morale.

A continuous feedback loop can empower employees to participate in making company-wide decisions. If they can be part of the change, they’ll feel more connected to the company’s trajectory.

Identify Immediate Challenges

Team members struggle to stay on top of backlogged issues when performance reviews happen only once or twice a year. And because annual reviews quickly seem outdated, managers often assess recent performance in a vacuum instead of revisiting old data.

Feedback must be reflexive to keep up with the demands of an unpredictable, fast-paced industry. In other words, it must be made Agile.

Agile continuous feedback loops respond to issues in real time, lowering recency bias and keeping action plans updated.

Improve Trust and Transparency

In a culture of constant feedback exchange, conversations about improvement are always happening. Managers and employees are both clear about their expectations of each other while being honest about what’s realistic.

By making goal-setting and decision-making processes open, transparent, and collaborative, continuous feedback loops foster trust between all levels of management. And better relationships create a more loyal workforce.

5 Strategies to Ensure Continuous Feedback for Employees

It’s a challenge to get an entire organization on board with big changes, but the key is to start simple.

Take a look at these five tips to kick off and maintain your continuous feedback loop.

1. Start a Weekly Feedback Session

Turning feedback exchange into a group activity takes some of the pressure off individuals.

Weekly feedback sessions, hosted by managers, are focused, collaborative conversations about recent successes, obstacles, and ideas. They provide opportunities for employees and managers to give and request feedback.

Honesty is important for these sessions to be productive. But to avoid starting conflicts or crushing morale, you’ll need guidelines that keep the discussion respectful and constructive.

2. Set Up a Continuous Improvement Board

A continuous improvement board is a great way to kickstart an interactive feedback culture. If your team is office-based, place a bulletin board somewhere visible and have a pack of sticky notes nearby. All team members can use them to:

  • Vote on strategies for continuous improvement put forth by management
  • Create mind maps to solve problems collaboratively
  • Leave messages for colleagues, from suggestions to a simple “good job”

A virtual whiteboard or Slack channel works just as well for remote teams.

3. Engage Remote Employees

Many remote employees reportedly feel excluded by colleagues and detached from company goals and values. So it’s essential to bring your remote employees into the continuous feedback loop.

Using employee feedback software like nGAGE is an easy way to give your remote teams a stake in the company’s growth. Peer-to-peer feedback ensures that the team is collaborating outside of projects, too.

4. Look At the Data Behind the Data

Quantitative results only tell you so much. The unspoken implications behind them are just as important to consider.

You can use them to see whether your feedback strategy is having the intended effect.

If feedback surveys aren’t getting the expected number of responses, ask employees how the process could be more engaging. If one-on-ones for a particular team don’t yield positive results, check in with them about their manager’s communication.

5. Put the Feedback into Practice

Continuous feedback loops are doomed to fail if no one takes affirmative action to meet goals and make changes. It’s built into the loop – there’s no progress if nothing has changed.

Leadership should be the first to model putting feedback into action. Set deadlines for deciding which employee feedback to implement and be transparent about them. When you’ve come to a consensus, let employees know:

  • What you’ve settled on
  • What the changes will look like
  • How long they’ll take to set up
  • Why other suggestions didn’t make the cut

Need Help Ensuring Effective Continuous Feedback?

Though it’s a simple system, a continuous feedback loop takes a lot of work to run smoothly. With so many moving parts, it can be difficult to make sure everyone’s participating and that no feedback gets lost along the way.

An employee feedback software like nGAGE takes work off your plate and keeps everyone accountable. With nGAGE, your company can:

  • Keep track of all feedback and who it’s given to, making it easier to spot recurring concerns and recent improvements.
  • Request feedback from employees and managers at any time with just the click of a button.
  • Give feedback anonymously, without fear of bias or retribution from superiors.

Request a demo now to see how nGAGE can streamline your continuous feedback loop.