Your Employees Don’t Want Feedback. They Want Attention.
Feedback is one of the things I push employers hardest on — because people need to know where they stand. If someone isn't doing well, they need to hear it so they can improve. And if they're doing well, they need you to be their cheerleader.
But there's a myth floating around I want to clear up first.
You've probably read that younger employees need feedback daily or weekly because they're conditioned by Instagram likes. Recent research doesn't bear that out. What people actually want isn't constant feedback — it's your attention. They want time with their manager.
That distinction matters. Gallup found that when a manager has one meaningful conversation a week with each direct report, employees are four times as likely to be highly engaged. Not a rating. Not a form. A conversation.
The Free Version: Walk Around and Say Something
The best no-cost feedback tool is old-fashioned encouragement. It used to be a manager walking the office with a cup of coffee, stopping to say something specific:
"I saw that proposal you put together for XYZ — that was really good. Thank you."
"I heard your presentation blew them away."
Those few words as you pass someone's desk mean more than you think. And it works in a remote setting too — same words, over a video call or a chat message. The medium doesn't matter. The specificity and the noticing do.
The Lost Art of the Handwritten Note
One of my CEO clients decided to handwrite a thank-you note to every employee over the course of a year. He had 150 people, so he did one a day — he'd ask that person's manager what they'd done well, then write the note by hand. He did most of them on airplanes.
The results were phenomenal. And the cost was essentially nothing but a little time.
There's something about a handwritten note that an email can't replicate. People keep them. They take them home. They show their families. Try it.
Formal Reviews: Get the Ratio Right
Then there's formal feedback. Have you done annual reviews lately? Are you actually giving your people the feedback they deserve?
Here's my rule, and it surprises people: for the majority of your employees, a review should be about 90% positive and 10% opportunity for improvement.
A review is not the moment to list everything someone has done wrong. That's not a review — that's an ambush. A good review asks how things are going working for you, thanks them specifically for what you caught them doing well this year, and then offers a focused area to grow.
If you have genuine performance problems, those need their own conversations, in real time — not saved up for December.
The Bottom Line
Do both. Informal encouragement in the hallway, handwritten notes, and real reviews done well. It's the combination that makes employees feel taken care of and confident they're doing the job you hoped they would.
Want help building a review process your managers will actually use? Grab a free 30-minute session with one of our HR experts, and let's talk it through.