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Employers should feel they can have honest and frank discussions with their colleagues. These dialogues are what differentiate a poor business from a great one.
Of course, conversations can become more challenging if they’re centred around difficult talking points. While many firms seemingly face no end of negative reviews online, when criticisms come from within, they can be much harder to grapple with.
After all, who knows the business better than colleagues? What could pain them so much that they’re driven to say something? It’s natural to have these worrying thoughts when internal negative feedback arises, but they may not help you deal with the problem.
So, what’s the best way to deal with negative feedback from employees? Here are a few ideas.
Remain Level-Headed
It’s becoming more acceptable to express at least some emotions in the workplace. There’s no need to bottle everything up so much anymore. That said, there’s a fine line that’s drawn here. While some employees can forgive their employer’s emotional outbursts in some contexts, it’s best to approach negative internal reviews with level-headedness. That way, you can remain focused and prove why you’re worthy of respect in the workplace; you take comments onboard and extrapolate them to improve the business.
Remember, though it can seem like an employee is ‘against’ you by their comment, you’re still on the same team even then. The next step is to fully process what they’ve said and work together to bring about positive change. Even if they’ve delivered the comments anonymously, there’s still a collaboration taking place between them highlighting a problem and you working on a solution.
Your maturity may also bring you to another realisation; negative internal feedback can be just as easily referred to as constructive criticism. Whichever term is used, either promotes positive change in the company.
Consult Change Practitioners
Change practitioners are specialist services that can advise and guide you through major organisational changes. If you’ve received notable negative internal feedback that calls for a significant reordering of organisational objectives, then it’s recommended that you consult these experts to help you restructure.
An OKR consultancy firm can help you redefine your business strategy as needed. Their agile transformation team can coach your workers, ensuring they can adapt flexibly to the changing working environment. Fresh organisational goals will be met swiftly with their input, removing the growing pains that often come with business development.
Inform your employees that you’re consulting these services too. That way, they’ll know you’re serious about implementing meaningful change and be glad you can flexibly realign organisational goals and values when the moment calls for it. They can also learn about all the good change practitioners can perform and be excited about the possibilities, tailoring future feedback into something more constructive. Ultimately, these services inspire hope for everyone in a company and give everyone something to look ahead to, which is vital when dealing with negative internal feedback. There’s nothing that can’t be fixed with the right support.
Approach Your Mentor
Were you once an employee who gave negative internal feedback about how the business was run? How did your employer at the time respond? It may be worth digging up answers to these questions.
Approach the mentor figures you’ve had in your professional career and make a few enquiries. They may have useful advice to impart that will help you deal with the situation. Equipped with the perspective that you’re not alone in these matters, you may feel more confident that you can make the most of what seemed like a bleak situation.
Your mentor may also be impartial if they’re not directly involved with the business. That makes their insight incredibly valuable because they may have an alternative take on the negative internal feedback that you had not yet considered. Is the employee even right in their remarks? Are both you and they missing something? Such realisations can be crucial, and your mentoring figures can nudge you to them.
Set Parameters
It’s a good idea to have processes for receiving negative internal feedback. That way, you won’t feel as blindsided when it does arrive, and employees can rest assured that they’ll be heard.
A specific approach is required here. Workers should have the option to contribute feedback anonymously, which will make them more likely to feel comfortable explaining their position. Everybody needs boundaries, and their remarks will be unfiltered if they’re certain there’ll be no repercussions. Enabling them to post feedback anonymously is a sign of good faith on your part and gets things off to a positive start.
You could also email surveys to workers, have software-based systems in place, and have an open-door policy in place too. All of these things can take the weight and tension out of negative internal feedback and make it a more regular occurrence for facilitating business tweaks. So, get ahead of these incidents, and take the supposed ‘sting’ out of them by defining feedback parameters ahead of time.
You may also like: How To Keep Employees and Staff Happy
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