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💨What’s growing: Employee performance… but only when they get good feedback.

Data from global analytics firm, Gallup, shows employees are 3.6 times more likely to feel motivated to do outstanding work when they get daily (vs. annual) feedback. Quality matters, too, of course — read on to get the details.

Feedback makes everything work better.

Which is necessary because the average US adult spends how many hours at work in their lifetime? (via Harvard DCE)

• 200,000

• 150,000

• 90,000

• 70,000

Scroll to the bottom to find out!

75%.

The share of employees that say they don’t get enough feedback to improve.

According to Officevibe, which gathers weekly insights from 440,000 employees, talent across the globe feels left in the dark.

The feedback desert is costing companies more than they realize.

Gallup studied what makes a highly engaged team, and here’s what they found: the single most impactful factor to drive engagement was frequent, high quality feedback.

They also found that feedback frequency generated a net boost in engagement and performance, regardless of quality.

So, if you can’t build feedback into your culture yet, at least build it into your schedule.

The feedback gap is killing your growth — plug it with these 4 rules.

In this case, no news is not good news.

If you’re not hearing problems, it’s not because there aren’t any. It’s because no one feels safe telling you.

The feedback loop in your business? Probably broken.

Half of managers think they’re giving useful feedback every week.
Only 1 in 5 employees agree.

Worse: 58% of workers say they have 0 opportunities to give feedback to their boss. (Gallup, 2024)

So your team is flying blind. You’re missing crucial signals. And your business? Quietly bleeding performance.

Fix it. Start with these 4 rules:

Rule 1: Point out the positives

Feedback only works when there’s trust. People who don’t trust you probably won’t listen to you, and they definitely won’t tell you hard truths.

Good feedback builds trust. Constant criticism destroys it.

Keep feedback balanced, and not just because people need to hear positives. 

When people know what works, they’ve got more data to improve the things that aren’t working.

Rule 2: Invite people to share negatives

You need to give more positive feedback, but your employees should give more criticism.

Your team has no complaints? 

That doesn’t mean they’re happy — it means they don’t trust you enough to complain.

Use an anonymous feedback tool to ask your employees for feedback. Pro tip: don’t use Google Forms. It’s not truly anonymous.

They probably won’t be tactful in their comments. 

Fine. You don’t need tact — you just need honesty. When you’re lucky enough to hear criticism, do this:

⭐ Getting complaints from customers, too? Here’s what to do with 1-star reviews.

Rule 3: Own your flaws openly

If your team works up the courage to tell you the truth and you ignore it or, worse, argue, they’ll never do it again.

Share the feedback you received — paraphrase it if you must — then share your action plan, and actually do it.

Prove that they can trust you.

Rule 4: Give better than you get

Take feedback however you get it, but give it thoughtfully. 

Good feedback meets ALL of these criteria:

• It’s specific – Narrow the topic, use examples, and focus on concrete behaviors.

• It’s timely – Share your thoughts while there’s still time to act.

• It’s actionable – Give all the information needed to turn words into action.

• It’s helpful – Consider the best interests of your listener.

Empathy goes a long way. Imagine hearing the same thing from someone who had the power to destroy your livelihood. Would you take it well?

Overlooked lift

According to Gallup data, lack of quality feedback is one of the biggest limiting factors on company performances worldwide.

It’s impacts range from higher engagement to satisfying individual development and straight up better performance.

Improving it is probably one of the highest lift efforts you can make.

DO

Give praise publicly, and constructive feedback privately.

DON’T

Only praise to sandwich negative feedback. People smell the BS.

What Hinge’s AI thinks of you.

It’ll give you feedback on how undateable you are.

63% of Hinge users don’t know what to write on their profiles, so the app launched a feature that flags your boring responses. Apparently, you’re not making hearts pound by saying you love “dogs, traveling, and Netflix binges”. 🥱

Optimize yourself.

Hinge says the feature exists to help “users showcase their best selves, resulting in more likes, matches, and ultimately, more dates.”

The age-old dating advice — just be yourself — has taken a backseat. AI can take your dating profile from dull and boring to witty and interesting, but what happens when these people actually get face-to-face with a date?

Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror, thinks it’s all gone too far.

In The I in Internet, she traces how we went from DIY fan pages and playful online chaos to carefully curated personal brands — shaped less by who we are, and more by what performs.

Once, the web was self-expression. Now it’s self-marketing.

To stay visible, let alone dateable, you’re expected to present a sleeker, smarter, more strategic version of yourself. Not the truest version. The most clickable.

Written by Amy Hawthorne and edited by Catherine Solbrig.