(c) Can Stock Photo / endotune
Are you an HR manager trying to make comments on this or that job, which is not done properly? Are you trying to find some ways to critique a job, but are unable to do it constructively? We understand you! It is always difficult to find a way of telling: “this is not good” or “this job is not done properly” or “you are not good at this” etc. Most of times the reaction to these statements will be a negative one.
However, if you want to reach a reaction, where you will point to the things you wanted to point to and have your employee admitting it in a natural way, you should follow some tricks while critiquing.
Those tricks can sometimes seem to be very simple or, on the contrary, hard to be followed, however will definitely be of a great help during the conversation with the employee. So, let us now start discussing them one by one:
- Do not critique the person, critique the job
Every time you want to give the job more personal attention, be careful to it. Doesn’t matter the fact that you know that the job is done by this exact person and it is his or her mistake. The most constructive way of critiquing a job is not talking about someone who did it. You better start with the mistakes that are in the job. Let’s imagine your employee has made a mistake in translating a letter. You should start with the exact mistake, instead of talking about the lack of this or that knowledge which was the result of the mistake. Do not critique the employee personally, saying that “You made this mistake in the job, because you don’t know how the letter should be written, you should have searched a little bit and then only doing this job”. Instead, try this method “The letter lacks this information, which needs to be added. I would like you to make a research on this and see what other examples of letters there are. While your letter is not that bad, I believe you can make it better”.
Here was the constructive critique which both motivates to doing the necessary changes and doesn’t hurt the employee personally.
- Be as specific as you can
Whenever you feel like you don’t like this or that way of the job done, ask yourself – what exactly you don’t like about it? Make sure there are some special points that you would like to speak about with the employee. So instead of yelling and screaming “This whole job is senseless, it all needs to be done again, plus you don’t have a deadline, this whole job is not done properly”, you can go on with telling: “I am glad you could have this project finished up till the deadline, however it still has some points which need to be changed. Let us discuss them: this part is good, while this part needs to be changed into…”. This will help the employee and motivate with the idea that not the whole project was done in vain. Besides, your specific notes on the things, will help the employee work more effectively on those things and not wander which part should be changed and which part should be stayed as it is.
- Give some recommendations
And after telling which exact parts are not good enough and need changes go on with giving some recommendations. Tell the employee which part can be changed into which. So, instead of telling “This project needs to be changed, you are the employee, I am not going to do your job instead of you by telling how you should do it, do it the way you can”, you should go on by telling “Okay, let us this time try to decide the direction we want to work into. Let’s take this part of the project, as our primary goal is to….. we would mainly like this part to be omitted and be more concentrated on the goals of our company”. This will help the employee to be settled on the right direction and know where he or she should go. Even if you think that it is not your responsibility to do their job, you still help them out, which is both important for the company and for the employee.
- Don’t go for assumptions
As a last step, if you feel like you have noticed why this job is not done properly, but you don’t know it as a fact, don’t talk about it at all. Do not make assumptions, by telling “I guess, you have made this mistake because you are not being careful during the trainings, or I think, you were too busy with your personal life this month, that is why the project is not done properly”. You better escape this kind of assumptions, because, first of all they may be not right. Secondly, you will put both yourself and the employee into that awkward situation when you both don’t know how to get out from. So, just keep it simple and keep everything on facts.
We do hope that all of those tricks will help you making constructive criticism and will improve the way that your employees are working. We hope that your employees will understand you and will start working even with more enthusiasm and energy.
