Providing dental employee feedback

Rebecca Boartfield

Tim Twigg

 

In two previous articles, we wrote about the value of transitioning from annual performance reviews to goal setting. The first focused on why you should consider a change in overall performance management. The second outlined how to create goals for your employees. In this article, we will look at the critical piece of monitoring employees’ performance and providing important feedback.

Gallup identified 12 core elements that are the best predictors of employee engagement and performance.1 Here we highlight three as they relate to feedback:

• In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
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• There is someone at work who encourages my development.
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• In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
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Clearly, employees want to receive feedback from someone at work. Feedback is not an absolute cure, but it is fundamental and necessary. But before anyone can provide feedback, an employee’s performance must be monitored so the person’s superior knows what kind of feedback to give. Monitoring performance can be done in two ways—behavioral and quantifiable.

Ways to capture behavioral performance include direct observation, communication (asking the employee to account for his or her performance, one way or another), and feedback from other sources such as coworkers, supervisors, clients, and patients.

Quantifiable monitoring becomes easy when you have established set goals for the employee. If the goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound (SMART), as suggested in our previous column, then monitoring performance as it relates to a specific goal objectifies the feedback.