Skip to Main Content

Communicating Feedback in a Remote Work Environment

Communicating constructive feedback can be a challenge, especially when working remotely. However, the importance of workplace feedback can’t be underestimated. Not only is it critical for individual professional development, but can serve as a pillar of success for the overall workplace. While the content of the feedback is important, how it is delivered to your team members plays a big role in how well it is received and used. Follow these steps to learn how to successfully communicate feedback to your remote employees.

Choosing the right medium for feedback

  • The platform you choose to communicate through can lead to different interpretations. Light feedback like a quick “good to go”, or minor changes can be sent via email or chat. However, to avoid mixed messaging, the best practice in providing feedback to team members is through voice or video. When it comes to performance reviews or a big project follow-up, it's important for your team members to be able to see your body language or hear the inflections in your voice to understand the tone of the messaging. Additionally, voice and video gives you the ability to converse easily back and forth, leading to a better understanding and ability to ask questions.

Creating a virtual feedback structure

  • Building a basis or structure for communicating feedback has its own way of streamlining your productivity, while ensuring that your team has the ability to understand everything that is mentioned during the process. Having a task, project based, or competency based feedback structure can reassure your colleagues that this is a normal process, that everyone will be working towards their goals and that feedback is welcome in the workplace. Doing so from a remote work environment is possible through project management softwares like Asana, Monday.com, Google Forms and more. This can encourage your team to continue offering their best feedback on a consistent basis with minimized pressure. This makes it possible to pinpoint your team’s continued performance and zone in on projects that could use refining, whereas other projects could continue being delivered just as they are.

Being specific with feedback

Communicating feedback tends to go one of two ways. Either team members don’t specify their problems, leading to comments that are kind in nature but confusing, or seem to be so direct that team members feel defensive.Especially in a WFH environment, the ambiguity can cause greater confusion and problems down the line. Successfully providing feedback requires a strategic approach, being specific with your objectives and providing actionable steps to improvement. Remember that honesty is the best policy.

Sharing feedback among your team members

  • You know the saying ‘team work makes the dream work?’ While everybody works from their home office, your team members may feel lonely and isolated. Sharing positive feedback amongst team members helps foster a community of inclusion, and can help newly onboarded team members get to know one another personally. Hearing success stories from fellow employees can also facilitate new ideas and encourage teammates to achieve similar goals.

It’s safe to say that communicating feedback is most accurate with uninterrupted communication, but how can your team find the easiest way to do so? With net2phone Canada’s Huddle Video Conferencing, remote teams stay connected and on-track during some of the most important conversations, saving valuable time and effort when customizing products and services to best serve your customers. Check out Huddle Video Conferencing today.