How Feedback Loses Its Effectiveness
In the current climate of working from home, the means of feedback have not only become more frequent but even more disconnected as well.Instead of a simple review process feedback is spread out in different sources, such as comments in the documents, questions in the emails and decision making in meetings. This can cause miscommunication between employees and management.
Workers spend more than nine workdays per year trying to process digital document feedback, according to a survey by Adobe.
The Hidden Cost of Disconnected Communication
Poor communication can definitely be a problem, but the biggest issues workers are facing are there are too many different means of communication.
Work doesn’t stay in one place, tasks show up in document changes, chat reactions, and extra context buried in email threads. Not including any additional instructions given in meetings.
Every medium adds another layer of input to the conversation, but there isn’t anything that gives a full view. Many employees are left piecing together the bits and pieces of their most important tasks with snippets of information.
Sometimes it’s difficult to keep track of what’s happening. There are many different people talking and it can get confusing. Communication can get mixed up. Close to 60% of workers get held up because they get conflicting feedback from multiple sources on the same project.
Analysis of feedback can end up taking as much time as the task itself.
When Too Many Tools Undermine Collaboration
The problem many face aren’t the individual tools themselves, but rather the tools don’t work well with each other.
The priority in most communication tools is efficiency. In most document management tools, it is production. For emails, it’s delivery and archiving. Each serving a distinct purpose, but none are actually built to be a feedback tool.
The consequence is that the feedback becomes pervasive and yet increasingly hard to find. Conversations go in all directions at once. Decisions are taken outside the core activity and important information can be lost between the different applications. Far from actually supporting each other, the applications end up vying for the user’s attention, dragging the user into multiple places just to get things done.
The Real-World Effects of Weak Communication
With poorly delivered feedback, tasks aren’t usually executed in the expected order; decisions are made, unmade and remade with the addition of new information. Many times, workers are left trying to determine what actually needs to be done.
The other side to this point is the sheer cognitive energy expended when you are trying to process the given information. Trying to decode messages given in bits and pieces like this has the result of your brain being overworked because you’re forced to deal with so many pieces of information at once.
This can lead to fatigue and burnout over time and one in seven employees say that continuing poor feedback has made them look for new jobs.
What’s Really Causing the Communication Breakdown?
It may seem tempting to frame the issue of poor feedback as one that is essentially a problem of people, managers who don’t communicate clearly. The data does not show this to be true.
Even if the feedback is positive, the feedback flows through the communication processes, which are inconsistent and can’t coherently connect with each other. The message is not failing because of its content, but because communication is unclear.
Essentially, effective feedback depends on effective systems in place.
How AI Is Rebuilding Broken Communication Cycles
To deal with this issue, it is necessary to consider a new strategy of providing feedback in the digital world.
In contrast to being considered as additional elements of the work process in which feedback is provided through comments on the sidelines, the contemporary tools regard feedback as an integral part of the whole process.
AI systems can help simplify the process due to the analysis of the huge number of information provided from comment and deriving action items. In short, technology turns data into actionable recommendations.
The Advantage of Clear Communication
In conclusion, digital workplaces were first about productivity, but now clarity is just as important. More than half of surveyed workers (57%) say that feedback given directly in a document is the most effective method. A strong sign for clarity and directness in communication.
People who manage feedback well and keep context clear are more likely to succeed, not because they work harder, but because the system is easier for them to navigate.
Take a look at these infographics for more insights:
Contributor disclosure: No AI was used in the creation of this post.
Reviewed by Irfan Ahmad.
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by Guest Contributor via Digital Information World
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