Why the best workers generally receive useless feedback

Every manager wants a team filled with high performers. Not only would it make their job easier, it would make them look good too. When it comes to giving feedback, however, new research from the AI-powered HR communications tool Textio found that bosses fall way short when it comes to their best employees.

“Independent research shows that [high performers are] 400 times more productive across industries than the average employee,” says Textio cofounder Kieran Snyder. “We were curious, given that organizations want to retain these people with such a high priority, how that translated into the management experience that they receive.”

Snyder looked at employees with the highest echelon of performance scores and compared it to the type of input they received from management from a quantity and quality standpoint. While high performers got one and a half times more feedback than everybody else, the content was emptier and less actionable because it contained fewer specific examples or concrete suggestions for improvement and growth and more exaggerations and clichés.

For example, a high performer might be told, “You really knocked that out of the park,” as opposed to “When you completed this proposal, I liked how you found independent research to add to the arguments.”

Feedback often focused on the employee’s personality, such as saying, “You’re brilliant.” And the group who received the lowest quality input was high-performing women, with nearly 40% of their feedback being problematic.

One of the reasons why managers might gloss over giving feedback to their best employees is a case of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Why High Performers Are Overlooked

“They aren’t necessarily thinking in terms of specific and actionable for those high performers, because the person’s already doing a good job,” says Snyder.

Textio data also shows that managers write about as much as their employees do during performance evaluations, says Snyder.

“If an employee writes a long self-assessment, managers will also write a long self-assessment. If an employee writes a shorter assessment, the manager will write a shorter one too,” she says. “High performers tend to write the longest self-assessments. I think managers consciously try not to match that.”

What Managers Should Do Differently

Feedback matters because people often quit their organizations when they’re not getting the support they need to grow. If you’re a manager, Snyder says there are a few things you can do to fix this problem. First, make sure that the feedback you give is meaningful. Instead of providing general observations, make it rich by rooting your comments in specific projects or initiatives. Also, comment on work behaviors rather than personality traits.

“Talk about things the person did and not their attributes or how they came across,” says Snyder.

Next, ensure that your feedback is relevant and recent. Don’t talk about something that happened a week ago. If you see a positive behavior or outcome, seize the moment and provide feedback in real time.

Also be sure not to exaggerate, even when feedback is positive. High performers can see through an overly complimentary comment.

“While it feels good to hear, it’s not super thoughtful and it’s rarely true,” says Snyder. “Most of us are not always or never anything. If a manager defaults to positive feelings they have about these high performers with exaggerated feedback, it means they’re not doing the work that is a manager’s job of being analytical and thoughtful about the specifics.”

Why It’s Important

Feedback is critical for all employees. When people get low-quality input—even if it’s positive in nature—they are 63% more likely to quit in the next year, according to Textio data. When you survey employees about what they want, they want more feedback because they want to get better at their jobs. This is especially true for high performers, who are ambitious people who want promotions, says Snyder.

“If they do get a promotion but don’t get particularly helpful feedback, they might stick around another year,” she says. “But if they’re not ready for another promotion the next year and you haven’t provided them with anything actionable to do to grow, it becomes really hard for that person who is probably in demand by other organizations to see why they should stay. There’s a real mismatch between organizations’ goals of retaining high performers and the feedback they receive being exactly designed not to retain them.”