Digest 1. What’s feedback got to do with well-being?
There is an increasing awareness of the importance of employee’s well-being at work, in its own sake, and for its impact on performance. This has created a growing concern, for both practitioners and academics, to explore how to foster it. On this matter, feedback is often seen controversially, as it may elicit both feelings of support and trust, but also defensiveness and negative emotions. So, how can we use feedback to maximize its benefits and avoid its risks?
Employee’s well-being depends on the feedback environment
To answer this question, a study by Sparr and Sonnentag (2008) has investigated how and why feedback characteristics influence job satisfaction, anxiety, depression, and turnover intentions (4 indicators of well-being at work). They surveyed 345 employees from several companies in Germany operating in three different industries: R&D, healthcare and public administration.
An analysis of the data revealed that, overall, employees who reported having a good feedback environment from their supervisors had higher employee well-being. More precisely, results suggest that improving the feedback environment can decrease individuals' job anxiety up to 25%, turnover intentions up to 32% and increase their job satisfaction up to 28%.
But what exactly do they mean by having a good feedback environment?
Here are the 5 dimensions that characterize a good feedback environment according to researchers:
Source credibility: refers to the perceived expertise and trustworthiness of the person offering the feedback, usually the line manager. Is she/he motivated enough and able to provide it with accuracy?
Feedback quality: is characterized by the perceived consistency and usefulness of the feedback, thus concerns the informational value of the messages.
Feedback delivery: embraces the pure relational aspect of feedback, with the perception of good intentions and the consideration of the recipient’s feelings when delivering the feedback.
Source availability: describes the perceived amount of contact an employee has with the sources of feedback and the possibility to approach them in order to obtain feedback.
Promotion of feedback seeking: refers to the extent to which people are encouraged, supported, and rewarded for actively asking for feedback.
Taken together, the results give support to the assumption that creating an advantageous feedback environment with the above characteristics might be a valuable resource for organizations, contributing to employees’ well-being. These findings underline the importance of the quality of feedback as well as the importance of a favorable context in which feedback information is delivered and available for employees.
Why is this so: the role of helplessness
The same study also revealed that one of the reasons behind the positive impact of feedback environment characteristics on well-being is that they decrease the sense of uncertainty about how to act in order to reach goals. In situations where this uncertainty cannot be dissolved, and ways to succeed remain unclear (e.g., because feedback is not available), feelings of helplessness are likely to occur. In sum, helplessness is “the psychological state that frequently results when events are uncontrollable’’ and which can lead to job depression, job anxiety, and turnover intentions, according to this investigation. Besides its negative impact on well-being, helplessness at work can bring other challenges, as it was found to be positively related to work alienation, which is lack of job involvement and organizational identification.
Even though a good feedback environment is in general associated with increased well-being, it is important to consider also the valence of feedback. This research indicated a need to be cautious with the frequency of negative feedback. Frequent negative feedback was found to be associated with an increase of feelings of helplessness and consequently a decrease in well-being (higher job depression, job anxiety, turnover intentions and lower job satisfaction). On the other hand, frequent positive feedback had the exact opposite effect.
Organizational implications
These results indicate that both quality and quantity of the feedback environment are important for well-being at work. Therefore, organizations should have in mind a couple of implications, especially regarding managers.
the revealed harmful impact of frequent negative feedback suggests that we should try limiting it to strictly the essential;
it will be beneficial to weight out the negative feedback with positive remarks by praising and bringing to light what is done well;
it is critical that organizations invest in managerial training to ensure high quality feedback is provided. Clear guidelines should be offered on how to deliver both positive and negative feedback to subordinates, and what are the characteristics of a good feedback environment;
make a cultural effort by encouraging everyone to seek feedback and making it the status quo. Obviously, this will need to start from the leaders. As a start, leaders initiative will decrease potential feelings of helplessness, as it transmits to employees that they don’t have to deal with the problems on their own but have the possibility to get some help if needed.
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Reference: Sparr, J. L., & Sonnentag, S. (2008). Feedback environment and well-being at work: The mediating role of personal control and feelings of helplessness. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 17(3), 388–412. https://doi.org/10.1080/13594320802077146