Employee feedback is so important! It’s how to align ACTIONS with VALUES inside your company.
But what does that mean – and how do you give good feedback? Bruce from Printavo weighs in with four tips to help you give employees great feedback in your print shop.
We need good feedback to operate at our highest level.
Your expectations don’t always align with your employees’ expectations. Usually, we give one-off, incremental feedback: please coat screens this way, please fold shirts this way, please answer emails like this instead of like that.
We need good feedback because good feedback helps employees make better decisions about their work…independently!
You are actually aligning actions with expectations and values.
Read on for more tips about giving great employee feedback:
TIP 1: Training is crucial!
Give every employee lots of time UP FRONT. We don’t value our time well enough as owners – so we put off training. But spending two days or a week focused specifically on a new employee shows them that you’re dedicated to their success – and stops a lot of headaches and questions in the future.
TIP 2: Assign a buddy!
Give every new hire a buddy that helps them get into a good routine. We want them to act as a deflection point for small questions. This is a huge and easy way to make a new employee comfortable.
TIP 3: Use the word “because” – and be TIMELY with your feedback!
Why do you want things done a certain way? BECAUSE of our values and goals: because we want great prints, because we want customers to get their shirts exactly the right way, because we want to increase our sales through better service. Crucially: don’t delay your feedback! As soon as you have the opportunity to offer feedback, do it! Don’t wait until a problem frustrates you: when a problem is mentioned and resolved on the spot, you engage with the problem while it’s “fresh.” This makes it much easier to offer correct, detailed, and accurate feedback.
TIP 4: Review feedback in 1-on-1 meetings.
You do hold 1-on-1 meetings with your team, right? We suggest meeting with each team member at least once every two weeks. This gives you a chance to reinforce feedback, develop mutual ways to meet goals, and ask for suggestions for how to meet goals.
Want to learn more? Our blog is full of useful info for running a better custom print business:
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