BA450 Unit 4 Performance Feedback Paper Example

A Graph on the Refrigerator Door: A BA450 Unit 4 Feedback Paper

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

BA450: Organizational Behavior Management

Unit 4 Feedback Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, the agency, the homes, the staff and every figure are composite and illustrative; the articles cited are real.

Feedback That Never Arrived

The diagnostic checklist at our Cedar Street group home found that evening staff received no feedback on residents' teaching programs. Their only information came at annual performance reviews, which mentioned programs in a sentence or two. Meanwhile, tasks such as medication passes received immediate attention when anything went wrong. Without feedback, staff had no way to know whether their program work was adequate, and no reason to treat it as important.

Feedback is information about past performance that can be used to change future performance. It is one of the most widely used tools in organizational behavior management, and also one of the most varied: it can be verbal, written or graphed, private or public, frequent or rare, specific or general, and delivered by different people.

What Makes Feedback Effective

Alvero et al. (2001) reviewed fourteen years of published studies of performance feedback in organizations. Feedback improved performance in most applications, but that its effects were more consistent when it was combined with other procedures, such as goal setting, antecedent instructions or consequences like praise. Among feedback characteristics, combinations of verbal, written and graphic feedback, feedback delivered by supervisors, and feedback that was frequent and private tended to be associated with more consistent effects.

Johnson (2013) examined two components of feedback separately: objective feedback, which reports performance data, and evaluative feedback, which judges whether performance was good or poor. He found that adding evaluative statements to objective information improved performance more than the objective information alone, suggesting that staff benefit from knowing both what they did and how it measures up.

Staff knew the programs mattered only because someone told them so once a year.

Designing the Feedback

Following that research, I designed two forms of feedback, each combining objective and evaluative information.

Weekly graphed feedback: every Monday, the house manager posts a graph on the refrigerator door, where every staff member passes it, showing the percentage of scheduled programs completed each evening for the past eight weeks, with a dashed line at the goal of 85 percent. Below it, she writes one sentence of evaluation, such as "Best week yet, three evenings at 100 percent." At the weekly staff meeting, she spends two minutes on the graph. The graph shows team data rather than individual names, which keeps it private enough to avoid embarrassment while letting staff see their shared work.

Spot-check feedback: after each spot-check observation of a program, I give the staff member feedback privately within a few minutes. I state the percentage of steps done correctly, praise specific correct steps and describe one step to change, demonstrating it if needed. The conversation takes less than five minutes.

Both forms are paired with a goal, which the Cedar Street staff set themselves at their October meeting.

The Sandwich Question

The house manager asked whether she should always start and end with praise, the familiar "feedback sandwich." A study that tested different feedback sequences and timing found that the order of positive and corrective statements made little difference to how well participants performed afterward (Henley & DiGennaro Reed, 2015). What mattered more was that feedback was specific and timely. I suggested that she lead with whatever was most useful, keep the corrective point specific and avoid vague praise added only to cushion criticism.

Results

Before feedback began, completed programs at Cedar Street averaged 74 percent after the binders were moved and staff were trained. In the six weeks after weekly graphs and spot-check feedback were added, completion rose to an average of 88 percent, meeting the goal in five of six weeks. Spot-check accuracy rose from 80 to 91 percent. Staff began asking for the graph when it was late.

One staff member told me that the graph made the program work feel like a real part of the job. Another said that the spot-check feedback was useful because it was about one step, not about her as a person.

Who Delivers Feedback

Alvero and colleagues found more consistent effects when supervisors delivered feedback, and that matched what staff told me: feedback from the house manager carried more weight than feedback from me, because she schedules shifts and writes their reviews. But the house manager works days and sees evening staff only at shift change. We solved this by splitting the roles. She owns the weekly graph and the two minutes at the staff meeting, and I or the senior evening staff member handle spot checks, always copying her on a short note so she can mention good work when she next sees the person. Staff began hearing about their teaching from the person whose opinion mattered most to them.

Feedback Across the Other Homes

The other three homes had higher completion, but none had routine feedback either. In November, each began posting the same weekly graph. Completion rose modestly at two homes and stayed flat at the third, which was already near 90 percent. Feedback seems to help most where there is room to improve.

Cautions

Feedback can backfire. Public posting of individual results can embarrass or anger staff, which is why the graph shows team totals. Feedback that is only corrective can make staff avoid the person who delivers it. Feedback that is too frequent can feel like surveillance. I checked with staff at the end of the six weeks, and most rated the feedback as helpful, though one asked that spot checks not happen during dinner, when residents need the most help. We moved them later in the evening.

Sustaining Feedback

Feedback that depends on me will stop when my attention shifts. To sustain it, the weekly graph was built into the house manager's Monday routine, with a template that takes ten minutes. Spot checks are shared among me, the house manager and a senior staff member, each trained to give feedback the same way.

Conclusion

Cedar Street staff had received feedback on programs once in two years. Weekly graphs and brief spot-check feedback, combining objective and evaluative information as Johnson's analysis supports and paired with a goal as Alvero and colleagues' review recommends, raised program completion and accuracy. Henley and DiGennaro Reed's findings freed the house manager from the sandwich formula, and routines were built to keep feedback going.

References

Alvero, A. M., Bucklin, B. R., & Austin, J. (2001). An objective review of the effectiveness and essential characteristics of performance feedback in organizational settings (1985-1998). Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 21(1), 3-29. https://doi.org/10.1300/J075v21n01_02

Henley, A. J., & DiGennaro Reed, F. D. (2015). Should you order the feedback sandwich? Efficacy of feedback sequence and timing. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 35(3-4), 321-335. https://doi.org/10.1080/01608061.2015.1093057

Johnson, D. A. (2013). A component analysis of the impact of evaluative and objective feedback on performance. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 33(2), 89-103. https://doi.org/10.1080/01608061.2013.785879