Happy New Year! Many companies perform annual employee reviews at the beginning of the year, so for the month of December, we polled people in our Wondering Wednesday series on LinkedIn to learn more about how and when employees receive feedback from their managers. Be sure to check out our tips below before you sit down in the next few weeks with your direct reports to provide feedback.

Real-Time Feedback Is Great! But…

Overwhelmingly, respondents reported that they receive feedback from their managers regularly. This is great news; it tells us that companies and managers are doing a better job of giving real-time feedback than they did in the past, when feedback was typically only delivered in annual reviews. Times have changed, and workers are much happier with this cadence of feedback than in the past.  

However, the majority of the feedback managers give on a regular basis is positive — and difficult conversations need to occur regularly, too.

Nearly half of our survey respondents reported feeling caught off-guard at their annual review by unanticipated feedback they wished they’d heard earlier in the year. This seems counterintuitive: employees are receiving more real-time feedback than ever before, and yet they’re still finding themselves caught off-guard during annual reviews. 

Three factors may be at play here:

1. Managers may think they are being direct when they are actually beating around the bush. Consider: Have you clearly and directly told your direct report that they’ve made a mistake that needs fixing? Have you brainstormed with them how to handle this type of situation differently next time? You should be clear with your employee that you have a concern that is important — it shouldn’t come across as a “by the way” at the end of your one-to-one meeting. 
2. Employees may not be hearing the information the way you intended. Consider: Have you presented the feedback both verbally and in a written follow-up email? Have you explained what the employee needs to do to improve? Did you provide sufficient information for them to understand the issue, including examples to demonstrate how their conduct or behavior affected the work, other employees, or the customer or client? 
3. Managers may feel uncomfortable giving difficult feedback (this part of the job is never fun!), so they may opt for giving frequent positive feedback and saving the difficult conversations for the annual assessment. Less confrontation + less overall stress = an easier day-to-day working relationship. Right? Well… not necessarily. It is important to give frequent feedback, but saving feedback on problem areas for an annual review may result in the employee not trusting the positive feedback they’re receiving throughout the year; it also ultimately deprives the employee from an opportunity to improve in real-time when an issue arises. After all, if you don’t know what’s wrong, you don’t know you should fix it.

Should Managers Give Feedback Early or Late in the Day?

Given all of that, what time of day is best to give feedback, especially if there are areas of improvement to discuss? 

Receiving difficult feedback at the beginning of the day might ruin the employee’s day and distract them from their work; on the other hand, they might feel sharpest in the morning and be better able to tap into their capacity to absorb and act on the information. This could give them the best opportunity to correct their mistakes, contributing to their general satisfaction with their own job performance. 

Receiving difficult feedback at the end of the day may give the employee the chance to go home and process their feelings without being distracted by work or having to act like nothing is wrong if they are upset; on the other hand, they might be too tired by the end of the day to self-regulate their feelings and to fully process what they’ve heard, lessening the impact of the feedback. The timing of the feedback may also create an unintended consequence of disrupting the employee’s work/life balance if they are still processing what they heard after they’ve clocked out for the day (i.e., they are unable to “leave work at work”). 

So how is a manager to know when to give feedback? In agreement with a 2016 study from researchers at the University of Toronto, respondents to our survey overwhelmingly said they prefer to receive feedback, especially difficult feedback, at the beginning of the day rather than the end of the day. Note that these answers may be hugely dependent on the individual’s personality, on their manager, and/or on the industry, so managers should remember that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. 

Our advice? Ask your employees what they would prefer. We guarantee they’ll be grateful that you considered their preferences.

Want to participate in the conversation or see the results for yourself? Head on over to the HR Solutions At Work LinkedIn page, where we post a new poll every Wednesday!