I think a big flaw with a lot of HR practices is that they are performed too late. For example, exit interviews. Employees are only asked for feedback after they have already decided to leave the company. What good does that do the company? Because they have already lost the good employee. I worked somewhere for 3 1/2 years and was only asked for my opinion once at my exit interview. And ironically, I was leaving because of bad management. But of course I didn't note that in my exit interview. It wouldn't have improved the time I spent there anyways. It's just like instructor evaluations. Why evaluate an instructor at the end of a course? It doesn't improve my learning experience in any way because I'm already finished with the course. I know that sounds selfish, but I give my most honest and thoughtful opinions when I have something to gain from it. When I don't have anything to gain from it, I don't really put much thought into it.
I have learned that the best leaders are continuously seeking feedback from their followers and want to constantly improve their performance. Leaders first have to want feedback. They have to prepare to hear things that they might not want to hear. But good leaders will look at it as a learning experience and as an opportunity to improve. Leaders also have to create an environment where employees feel safe enough to give their honest feedback. If employees do not feel safe, the only feedback given about a leader will be about how great of a job they are doing. Which will just continue a cycle of bad leadership. Lastly, leaders have to commit to making improvements after receiving feedback. The worst feeling for an employee, student, etc. is when you put a lot of time and thought into your feedback, and nothing changes. I can't tell you how many times I've had high hopes for professors to make improvements to their course, just to hear the next semester from a friend that it is the same. Can they not handle the truth? Or maybe I just give bad feedback.
Excellent ideas! Yes, addressing concerns and organizational constraints before someone leaves the organization is definitely preferable to relying primarily on exit interviews. My HR text mentions some organizations conducting exit interviews long-term. They will call/contact the former employee one, three and six months after leaving the organization and ask follow-up questions about his or her experiences and reasons for leaving. This might allow extreme emotions that might naturally occur following a dismissal or leaving a company to mellow and HR to have a better idea of how to improve. Also, sometimes organizations are forced to terminate or lay off well-qualified employees: NASA comes to mind. With the end of manned space missions NASA recently let go significant amounts of engineers and scientists. The organization may want to re-hire these employees in the future for new missions and endeavors. This means NASA has a vested interest in making the severance process as low-stress and optimistic as possible (placement services, counseling). Some well-known or successful organizations (major hospitals, Google) also have "Alumni Programs" when they may want to rehire employees that have quit, or keep tabs on the career trajectories of former employees.
ReplyDeleteWith student feedback in higher education, I can attest that it is difficult to process all the comments from students. An interesting improvement might involve the professor doing a quick bullet point write-up of how they are changing their course and teaching methods based on last semester. This could be distributed to the new, incoming students to let them know the professor seriously considers student reactions, and to former students to let them know their reactions are valued. Long-term this could contribute to more students completing and investing thought and time in course evaluations! Universities, schools or departments could also provide a super-brief training to students on the basics of constructive feedback, allowing faculty to more easily process course evaluations.
I think the write-up you suggested is a great idea! I know I would really like that.
DeleteDo you receive a lot of feedback that's not constructive? Are there things like "tests were too hard"?
I think a training on giving constructive feedback would be helpful for exit interviews as well. I worked at a company who could essentially never use their exit interview data because people would write things like "didn't get along with manager". Well why did you not get along with your manager?
One would also want to know if anyone does anything with the exit interviews...one organization I was at had big piles of them and they let the intern look at them. With regard to faculty evaluations, I look at it as short vs. long term. The current student may not see the change, but the next term/year could (sort of like you giving shopping feedback on a transaction...you probably won't see that sales person again, but your input helps).
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