Feedback in the Workplace

“Good enough” feedback, whether given or received, can serve as a powerful resource in our lives—both at work and at home. To fully harness its potential, as usual, it takes self-awareness and mindfulness.

Today, it’s common practice in most workplaces to request and give formal feedback among colleagues, about each other and even about themselves.

In bureaucratic organizations, feedback tends to come only from leaders about their subordinates, in written form, typically bi-annually or annually. The subordinate receives their evaluation in writing, where it’s made clear how this will affect their potential bonus or future salary. In these hierarchical organizations, these feedback loops aren’t given real weight; they’re just another operational rule that’s trendy nowadays, so they “have to be done.”

The next level of organizations, typically multinational corporations, remains quite hierarchical but assigns importance to individuals in the name of efficiency. Feedback is gathered from multiple sources, and even colleagues can evaluate their superiors (e.g., 360-degree evaluations). However, the focus of the feedback typically remains on roles—a mask speaks to a mask, since “we’re professionals” and we focus on the numbers.

Typical feedback: “They micromanage too much” or “Their communication isn’t effective.” While these comments are likely true, they’re essentially meaningless because they describe symptoms, not the root causes.

To receive real, valuable feedback that we can actually use, we need to take off the masks and speak person-to-person. Additionally, we must understand that feedback inherently has three layers: the person being evaluated, the person giving the feedback, and the relationship between them.

Let’s take a few examples:

“I don’t like that they always ask follow-up questions.”

This is pretty good feedback, especially if I add, “because it makes me uncertain.” Now it includes the cautious person who needs to know everything, my own insecurity, and the dynamic between us, where we haven’t discussed this in real time, and so it ends up in the “official” anonymous feedback session.

“They’re not tough enough with clients.”

Here, the feedback giver clearly sees themselves as being tougher. Of course, no one can know for sure what impact that would have, or whether it would be better than the current approach—because, as Milan Kundera tells us, life is but a sketch.

From these examples, it’s clear to me that without self-awareness and mindfulness, even diligently gathered feedback will fall flat and take no root. And without that, what’s the point?

How does it work at Virgo? – Ági Józsa-Török, HR Lead

At every level of our organization, feedback is genuinely valued—this is not just corporate speak. Feedback is something we can all build upon. Managers rely on feedback from employees to identify directions for organizational change, and colleagues receive the information they need for personal and professional growth from each other and their leaders. Even in the first few months after joining, we have several conversations where both the new colleague and the company can share their thoughts about the onboarding process. These discussions provide opportunities to grow together during the onboarding period, fine-tune the job role, and align mutual expectations. After settling in, employees receive official feedback from each other at least once a year, which they review during career discussions with their direct supervisor and HR, using it to map out development paths for the coming period.

For organizational development, it’s crucial that our colleagues regularly share their opinions about the company’s operations, values, and direction. Feedback comes through satisfaction surveys, employee evaluations, strategic discussions, and value assessments, all of which provide insight for leadership in making decisions about the future.

Honesty is one of our core values—both giving and receiving. This is evident in our culture of transparent feedback.

Despite this, we’re still working on developing our feedback culture, because giving “good enough” feedback is not easy! Naturally, we tend to shy away from it, as it involves a form of confrontation where we have to stand in front of the other person, express our opinion, and even risk disagreement, which could leave us feeling vulnerable. But the effort is worth it. We all grow from the process—both the giver and the receiver.

From our experience, positive feedback and praise can be even harder to accept than constructive criticism. Often, we brush off compliments with, “Oh, it wasn’t just me,” or “That’s nothing, it’s not even worth mentioning,” or “It’s no big deal.” But we should take a moment and store these praises in our imaginary backpacks, as we can draw strength from them on tougher days.