Providing employees with positive performance appraisals and feedback significantly boosts their confidence. Such reviews create a “good feeling” attitude among employees and consequently boosts their productivity. Positive reviews also enhance friendly competition among employees with minimal chances of workplace rivalry. Workers are motivated to perform better with a view of enhancing previous reviews as opposed to comparing the reviews of their colleagues. Positive reviews and feedback also improves the individual personality of employees. Employees are more confident and sound in their judgment. Confident employees not only ascend to leadership positions with ease but are also role models for others. Employees who feel appreciated are also less likely to engage in irresponsible behavior. The positive reviews and feedback create a sense of importance among employees making them less likely to engage in practices that could negatively affect their productivity.
Providing employees with positive performance appraisals and feedback may result to numerous benefits for an organization, however, such review could prove disastrous in the long run. Reviewing an employee positively without highlighting the areas that need improvement could result in laxity in the workplace. Employees get to learn that all forms of review and feedback will be positive irrespective of their inactiveness or lack of productivity. Various human resource management theories of employee productivity reveal that employees will always take advantage of regulations and systems to work less. Such practices lead to massive losses for an organization as productivity levels dip. Providing employees with positive reviews could also result to poor and shoddy reviews. The essence of a review is to determine if intended plans were achieved. In conducting a review, both positive and negative feedback makes the process detailed and thorough. If all reviews have to offer a positive feedback, then management does not require an extensive review of its workforce.
While some human resource experts argue that negative feedback and reviews are disadvantageous to organizations, there are proven benefits of the same. The negative feedback act as a wakeup call to employees requiring them to improve their performance or else face leave the organization. Irrespective of the best and positive intentions of an organization to maintain and motivate its workforce, some employees will never recognize their effort. Organizations must get rid of such employees at the earliest chance possible. A negative review and feedback will get rid of such employees saving an organization a great deal of resources. Negative feedback which is provided in a dignified and appropriate manner could significantly improve the skills and morale of an employee. Negative feedback works as stepping stone for an employee’s self-betterment.
The main disadvantage of a negative feedback is the possibility of loss of confidence and morale. In most cases, negative feedback is often delivered in a stern and formal report making it difficult for employees to dispute the same. Most organizations rely on computer systems to review employee performance eliminating the element of human understanding. While most systems provide an accurate representation of performance, they do adequately explain the reasons for the negative review and feedback. Employees may feel that the organization is unappreciative of their efforts and opt to leave. Negative feedback and reviews may create animosity and unhealthy competition in the workplace. Employees will use all means possible to avoid such reviews including unethical and underhand methods. Such practices eventually end up costing an organization its valuable employees.
