Improving the feedback environment: Towards a performance review model that promotes employee development

Abstract: Organizations have focused on the annual performance review as their primary vehicle to communicate feedback, however the time has come to transform the process by reconnecting feedback and its management to organizational effectiveness and by improving the environment in which feedback occurs, thereby cultivating a more inclusive workplace. Historically, empirical research has supported claims that an organization’s feedback environment is related to beneficial outcomes for the development of employees and organizations. While we have a valid and reliable way to measure feedback environment, we do not know much about the underlying antecedents or how to intentionally create, develop, or sustain a favorable feedback environment.



This experimental-design study evaluated intentional and systematic attempts to improve an organization’s feedback environment through employee training on the seven dimensions of the feedback environment derived from Steelman, et al.’s conceptual model and how to promulgate a favorable context for feedback within their work unit. The training targeted increasing the quality and frequency of feedback exchanges between employees at multiple levels and throughout an organization; with the goal of improving the feedback environment by helping individuals better perceive feedback as a valuable resource for ongoing, sustainable personal and professional development, and improvement of effectiveness and performance, inter alia. In cases where the initial perceptions of the environment were unfavorable, the intervention showed statistically-significant improvement in the environment. This evidence suggests training can help improve the feedback environment where it is needed most, which will benefit practitioners as they are developing and coaching their organization’s talent.