Quality Safety Edge: Performance Management -- Effective Feedback: The Key to Engineering Performance

“How are you doing?” is one of our most common greetings. Yet the question is rarely answered, simply because the questioner usually doesn't want to know. And as we reply with a ritual “Fine,” “O.K.” or “Couldn't be better!”, how we wish that someone would sit us down, with time to spare, look straight at us and say “How are you really doing?”

It's the same in business. We are busy fulfilling our job description. The boss is busy collecting statistics and keeping his files in order, and somehow the two of us never quite connect on the crucial question "How are you doing?" Almost all performance problems involve employees who do not receive regular and specific information about their performance.

This lack of feedback is a widespread problem. Our company has worked with a large number of different firms S process engineering companies and oil drilling and coal mining firms – that all had inadequate feedback systems. Although there is an overabundance of feedback studies, most managers never see such articles and therefore do not realize the relationship between feedback and good performance.

Feedback versus management information

By feedback we mean information given to an employee that guides future performance, as contrasted with data provided by information systems that serve only the needs of upper management.

Many organizations have excellent management information and project control systems that, however, fail to provide objective performance data to those actually doing the job. Such systems help managers plan their work and identify problems that they correct when the magnitude justifies intervention.

A feedback system, on the other hand, should provide specific information to the employee, so that problems specific information to the employee, so that problems can be corrected on an ongoing basis, prior to management's need to intervene. Management information systems do not provide adequate performance feedback, even though the employees may record and even summarize performance data that feed into those systems.

Recognizing feedback problems

The first step toward improving your feedback system is to recognize that a problem exists.

Chances are you have a feedback problem if you are experiencing low performance and/or low morale. If anyone in your organization has commented “We've got a training problem,” or “We just can't get good people anymore,” then you would probably be surprised by how much you can improve the situation with better feedback.

Such statements usually refer to new employees who are displaying performance problems, while more-experienced professionals are said to “burn out.” They lose interest in their work, exert less effort, achieve poorer results and often make a career change.

Causes of the problem

The primary cause of feedback problems lies in the power structure of the organization.

Most management information systems are designed to meet the needs of management. Information is a source of power and the tendency in the past has been to consolidate such power in the upper levels of administration. In order to control operations and make effective decisions, managers typically require information summarized in a way that provides “the big picture.” Such data are not immediate nor specific enough to function effectively as feedback to the individual per-former.

A second aspect of the problem relates to the way such data are used.

Feedback systems usually require much more frequent input of data than management information systems, and job leaders do not have time to collect all of the necessary information. Under these circumstances, an effective feedback system usually requires employees to collect their own performance data, data that most managers tend not to trust.

The reason for this distrust has to do with their use of the data. Managers are expected to keep their eyes open for errors and then correct them, which often encourages managers to be overly critical. If performance data are used solely as the basis for punitive action, then employees will work only to avoid getting caught, and the feedback system will be doomed to fail.

Characteristics of effective feedback

The following four qualities are essential to effective feedback:

Feedback should be comprehensive

An effective feedback system provides information on all relevant dimensions of performance (see Table 1). Measuring all relevant dimensions is often difficult in engineering, but is very important nonetheless.

Most companies keep track of cost (e.g., man hours) and timeliness (e.g., schedule performance), which are easily quantified. Managers in those companies later wonder why the quality of the work is slipping, without realizing that no one consistently monitors technical accuracy, the amount of time spent in rework, or any other measure reflecting the quality of work.

Such problems are quite subtle in engineering. For example, what happens when the quality of engineering work suffers?

The answer is not obvious – generally the problems are corrected before the work is issued. Often, the initial components appear to come in on schedule and under budget; yet, in the final analysis, those components are incomplete or represent inadequate compromises of certain design or cost factors. Someone must spend time correcting those problems before the project is complete. Schedules begin to slip and budgets become difficult to control.

Meanwhile, the young engineer does not realize that the work was incomplete and he has no opportunity to learn why changes were made. That engineer may repeat the same mistakes or even adopt an attitude of “What does it matter, someone is going to redo it all anyway.” Measurement of only some relevant dimensions results in lopsided performance and in employees unable to learn from their mistakes in some areas.

The solution is to strive for a profile of performance by measuring all important dimensions.

Feedback should be meaningful and specific

Feedback must also be meaningful to the performer. The employees must understand what each measure is, and how it is affected by what they do. The measures should be as simple as possible and should help the employee do a better job.

Furthermore, feedback should be specific information. It should be specific in that it indicates the change that is needed, and should be information rather than simple data.

Data may be simple objective measurements of performance, while information is data relative to some standard. While data may be considered information if employees clearly know the standards, engineering performance is so complex that feedback sheets should generally display the standard or goal.

Thus, if your department has a standardized list of specifications that are typically developed on a particular job, with spaces for recording the date of completion, you should also have another column for recording the scheduled completion date.

Of course, for this form to be maximally effective, it should also have a place for the actual and estimated hours, as well as some evaluation of the quality for each specification, presenting a more complete profile of the performance achieved.

Feedback should be timely

In general, the sooner the information follows the actual performance, the better. The feedback should be frequent enough to maintain steady performance. Ideally, the employee should be able to take corrective action as soon as performance starts to fall below acceptable levels. The best way to ensure that feedback is immediate and frequent is to make employees responsible for recording their own performance. This ensures that they trust the information and can take corrective action as soon as problems develop.

Feedback should reflect trends in performance

Feedback should also reflect performance over a period of time. This allows employees to evaluate the effectiveness of their present work habits and learn the importance of their efforts. Such a format also allows supervisors to praise improvements in performance and to work with subordinates when performance begins to deteriorate.

The form mentioned above could provide this kind of information by having a column for cumulative percent of specifications completed on time or, better yet, could include an attached graph of percent complete on time, total percent complete and a goal line. This graph might be similar to scheduling graphs that typify project control systems, but would be used by an individual work group within a discipline.

Graphs have an additional benefit for presenting feedback in that they can be easily interpreted by employees. Such graphs should be clearly labeled and have no more than two or three lines, one representing the goal or standard. More information would add too much complexity, making the graphs difficult to interpret and less effective for feedback.