Performance reviews are crucial for employee development, providing opportunities for feedback, goal setting, and aligning expectations. To make these reviews effective, balancing subjective and objective feedback is essential. This approach ensures that evaluations are comprehensive, fair, and conducive to professional growth. Today we will explore what subjective and objective feedback entails, their importance, and how to combine them effectively in performance reviews
What is Subjective and Objective Feedback?
According to Gallup, 80% of employees who report receiving meaningful feedback in the past week are fully engaged, irrespective of their office attendance. This statistic underscores the critical need for consistent and equitable employee feedback. However, from a survey of nearly 15,000 employees, only 16% indicated that their most recent conversation with their manager was meaningful. This is where balancing both subjective and objective Feedback can make a difference.
Subjective feedback is rooted in personal judgments, opinions, and perceptions. It typically involves qualitative assessments influenced by the evaluator’s experiences and emotions. For example, stating that an employee “demonstrates strong initiative” or “could benefit from improving communication skills” exemplifies subjective feedback.
In contrast, objective feedback relies on measurable data and concrete evidence. It focuses on quantifiable outcomes such as meeting sales targets or successfully achieving project milestones. Objective feedback is factual and often supported by specific examples, like “completed the project ahead of schedule” or “exceeded sales goals by 20%.”
Why is Subjective Feedback Important?
Subjective feedback provides valuable insights into an employee’s interpersonal skills, attitudes, and behavioural tendencies. It helps to capture the nuances of performance that numbers alone cannot convey.
When to use Subjective Feedback
When evaluating ‘soft skills’ such as communication, teamwork, and leadership, subjective feedback becomes particularly valuable. It is especially useful during discussions about personal development and career aspirations, where individual strengths and areas for improvement become known. Additionally, subjective feedback plays a crucial role in situations where specific behaviours need encouragement or correction, providing insights that help guide personal and professional growth.
How to Deliver It
Be Specific: Use clear examples to illustrate your points. Instead of saying, “You need to be more proactive,” say, “I noticed you didn’t take the initiative in the last team meeting. It would be beneficial if you could share your ideas more actively.”
Be Timely: Provide feedback close to the occurrence of the behaviour to ensure relevance and impact.
Be Constructive: Focus on behaviour rather than personality traits. Frame your feedback in a way that encourages improvement.
Why is Objective Feedback Important?
Objective feedback ensures fairness and clarity by focusing on measurable outcomes. It provides a solid foundation for evaluating performance based on concrete criteria, making it easier to identify areas for improvement and recognise achievements.
When to Use Objective Feedback
When discussing performance metrics and KPIs: Utilising objective data allows for a precise evaluation of how well employees are meeting established performance benchmarks.
In evaluating task completion and goal achievement: Objective feedback provides a clear assessment of whether employees have successfully completed assigned tasks and achieved their set goals.
For making decisions related to promotions, raises, and rewards: Because it is based on quantifiable achievements, objective feedback helps justify decisions regarding career advancement and compensation adjustments.
To promote accountability and recognition: Clear, measurable feedback fosters a culture of accountability by linking individual contributions to organisational goals. It also ensures that recognition is merit-based and aligned with actual performance outcomes.
How to Deliver Objective Feedback
Be Data Driven: Support your feedback with quantifiable metrics and specific examples.
Be Transparent: Clearly communicate the criteria and standards used for evaluation to ensure clarity and understanding.
Be Objective: Focus on factual evidence and avoid subjective interpretations or personal biases in your feedback.
The Importance of Balancing Subjective and Objective Feedback
Combining subjective and objective feedback provides a well-rounded view of an employee’s performance. Subjective feedback captures interpersonal dynamics and growth areas that numbers might miss, while objective feedback ensures that evaluations are based on measurable outcomes. Balancing the two creates a fairer, more comprehensive review process, leading to better employee engagement and development.
Benefits of a Balanced Approach
A balanced approach to performance evaluation brings multiple benefits to organisations and employees alike. By integrating qualitative and quantitative aspects of performance, it offers a comprehensive understanding of employee contributions, encompassing measurable achievements alongside qualitative factors like interpersonal skills and leadership abilities. This holistic perspective reduces the influence of bias and subjective judgments, promoting fairness in evaluations and fostering a merit based culture. Moreover, this approach supports targeted development plans that address specific strengths and areas for improvement, empowering employees to grow professionally in alignment with organisational goals. Overall, balancing qualitative insights with quantitative metrics enhances the accuracy of performance assessments, drives employee development, and contributes to organisational success.
Top Tips for Balancing Subjective and Objective Feedback in Performance Reviews
Avoiding Bias
Use a Structured Framework: Implement a consistent evaluation process for all employees. By applying uniform criteria and structured formats, you can reduce personal biases and ensure that each employee is evaluated on an equal basis. For instance, using standardised evaluation forms and criteria that are clearly defined for everyone helps maintain consistency and fairness.
Reflect on Your Own Biases: Be conscious of your personal biases and actively work to separate them from your evaluations. Regularly examine your assumptions and ensure they do not influence your judgment. Consider engaging with Upward Feedback to give employees the opportunity to feedback on your management style. This will allow you to see what you need to work on in order to be a more inclusive and efficient manager.
Use 360 Degree Reviews
Incorporate Peer Feedback: Gather ongoing feedback from a variety of sources, including peers, subordinates, and supervisors. This approach, often referred to as 360 degree feedback, provides a well-rounded view of an employee’s performance, reducing the impact of any single person’s biases or blind spots. For example, combining peer reviews with manager assessments can reveal various aspects of performance and ensure a more comprehensive evaluation.
Use Surveys and Self-Assessments: Allow employees to self-evaluate and compare their perceptions with peer reviews. Self-assessments surveys encourage employees to reflect on their performance and identify areas for improvement. When combined with peer feedback, they offer valuable insights into any discrepancies between self-perception and how others perceive them, fostering greater self-awareness and personal development.
Analyse Consistently: Regularly reviewing and updating your 360 degree feedback processes is crucial for maintaining effectiveness and impartiality. This involves analysing feedback data to identify trends and patterns, refining the mechanisms to eliminate biases, and ensuring that the feedback gathered is actionable and pertinent. Tools like emPerform’s performance and status reporting dashboards simplify gaining insights into organisational health. Consistent analysis is key to preserving the feedback process’s integrity and practical value.
Focus on Goal Management
Set Clear and Measurable Goals: Define specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals for employees. This clarity helps align subjective feedback with objective performance metrics, making it easier to assess whether employees are meeting expectations. For example, instead of a vague goal like “improve communication skills,” set a goal like “lead weekly team meetings and provide updates on project status.”
Regularly Review Progress: Schedule periodic check ins to assess goal progress and make necessary adjustments. These sessions provide a platform for continuous feedback—both subjective and objective—helping keep employees aligned with their targets. emPerform’s goal management tool simplifies these progress reviews, ensuring goals remain relevant and attainable, and enabling timely modifications based on performance and changing conditions.
Link Feedback to Goals: Align feedback with the goals set for employees. When delivering feedback, relate it to specific goals and objectives to provide context and relevance. This approach helps employees understand how their actions and behaviours impact their progress toward achieving their goals and fosters a clearer connection between feedback and performance improvement. Consider our blog ‘Mentoring for Employee Development’ for more insight on goal management.
Embrace different perspectives
Conduct Anonymous Surveys: Use anonymous surveys to gather candid feedback from employees. Anonymity encourages honest input, especially on sensitive issues, and can reveal insights that might not be shared openly. These surveys can be used to collect feedback on various aspects of performance and workplace dynamics, providing valuable data that complements formal reviews.
Encourage Open Dialogue: Foster an environment where employees feel comfortable sharing their perspectives and feedback. Open communication channels allow for diverse viewpoints and contribute to a more accurate and well-rounded understanding of performance. Using emotional intelligence to create a culture of openness and transparency encourages constructive feedback and continuous improvement.
In conclusion, as explored above achieving a balanced approach to performance reviews by integrating subjective and objective feedback is pivotal for fostering organisational growth and employee development. Subjective feedback provides valuable insights into interpersonal dynamics and behavioural tendencies, crucial for understanding the holistic impact of employees within the workplace. On the other hand, objective feedback ensures fairness and clarity by focusing on measurable outcomes, thereby supporting transparent evaluations and informed decision-making on promotions and rewards. By combining these two types of feedback effectively, organisations can create a comprehensive review process that promotes accountability, enhances employee engagement, and facilitates targeted development initiatives aligned with both individual aspirations and organisational objectives.
Embracing diverse perspectives through tools like emPerform’s 360 degree reviews and anonymous surveys further enhances the richness of feedback, ensuring that evaluations are thorough, unbiased, and conducive to continuous improvement. Ultimately, a well-executed approach to balancing subjective and objective feedback not only strengthens performance evaluation practices but also contributes to a culture of excellence and success within the workplace.
If you want to embark on your journey toward a better HR and employee feedback system – we’re here to help. emPerform gives you rich insights into performance and talent so you can make better decisions – this includes peer reviews and upward feedback, manager dashboards and status reports and much more.
