公司留住员工的最佳方法：及时反馈他们的意见
虽然美国继续录得就业增长，但企业提供的工作岗位却越来越少。在这种情况下，当员工离职时，他们的职位往往得不到补充。留住现有团队比以往任何时候都更重要，而提供无效反馈是导致员工流失率高的主要原因。
Textio调查了导致员工流失的原因，其综合报告调查了各行各业的企业员工，研究了他们在正式绩效考核中获得的反馈与其留任率之间的关系。
我们清楚地认识到，无效反馈或反馈不足会导致员工流失。此外，我们的调查结果表明，并非所有的反馈结果都是平等的，而且并非所有员工都享有平等地获得反馈意见的机会。
得不到明确反馈的员工会辞职
根据今年的调查，38%的人正积极考虑离开目前的工作单位，或者已经开始去其他单位面试了。
在计划留任的受访者中，约有61%的人认同以下观点：他们了解获得下一次晋升所需要的条件（管理者对自己的期望）。在计划离职的受访者中，只有21%的人这样认为。
尽管人们提出了考虑新工作的各种原因，从金钱到更大的灵活性再到搬家，但最常见的几大原因与人们在工作中得到的反馈直接相关。事实上，17%的受访者明确指出，“反馈不足”是他们另谋高就的主要原因。许多其他受访者提到了与反馈相关的原因，比如“感觉怀才不遇”或“缺乏成长机会”。
并非所有反馈都同样有效
调查数据显示，员工收到的反馈与他们决定去留之间存在密切联系。我们还分析了绩效考核数据集，看看是否存在相同的模式。结果发现，收到无效反馈的员工一年后留在公司的可能性大大降低。
为了探究这个问题，我们研究了一家大型国际企业对不同职位的绩效评估。该数据集包含超过13,000名员工在两个年度评估周期内的绩效评估结果。由于我们拥有两个年度的数据，可以查看第一年数据集中的员工是否包含在第二年的数据集中。换句话说，我们可以查看每位员工的绩效相关书面反馈质量，以及他们第二年去留与否。
与收到更多具有可操作性反馈的员工相比，收到无效反馈的员工更有可能离开公司。更重要的是，这种影响是因果关系，而不仅仅是相关性：我们的分析控制了潜在的干扰因素，如数字绩效评级和员工任期。与其他人相比，收到无效反馈的员工离开公司的可能性要高出63%。无论他们是高绩效员工、中等绩效员工还是低绩效员工，情况都是如此。
如果考虑到无效、不具备可操作性反馈的普遍性，那么这种反馈就尤其成问题：在我们的数据集中，50%的人至少收到过一些不具备可操作性的反馈。
这还不是全部。避免给出直接反馈也会导致员工辞职。即使提供了反馈，也可能以间接或避免冲突的方式提供。这种闪烁其辞的做法很常见，即反馈提供者用委婉的语言表达他们的反馈意见。
闪烁其辞的现象（这会产生问题）很普遍，在今年的数据集中，有三分之一的人收到了这类反馈。考虑一下告诉你的报告“必须在本周完成初稿”和“可以考虑在本周完成初稿” 之间的区别。当管理者使用模棱两可的语言来提出要求（员工本应将其理解为一项强制性要求）时，就会淡化信息。
到目前为止，“我认为”是模棱两可反馈中最常用的短语。通过以“我认为”的陈述来表达反馈意见，管理者就是在向员工传达，他们的观点可能只是一己之见，而且可能并不完全确定。即使在正面反馈中，这也会产生问题，因为管理者会在不经意间传达出对其所给予的表扬持怀疑态度。例如，说"我认为你的演示非常亮眼"，而不是直接说汇报完成得很好。
这很重要。那些收到含有"我认为"这类模棱两可的表述的绩效评估的人在一年内离职的可能性比其他人高出29%。
高质量的反馈并不是平均分配的
反馈对留住员工很重要，但并不是所有人群都能得到同样高质量的反馈。就像去年的报告一样，所有女性（不论种族）和所有有色人种（不论性格）得到的反馈质量都较低，总体反馈数量也少于其他人。
例如：
• 83%的男性表示，他们了解获得下一次晋升所需的条件，而女性、非二元性别和变性人的这一比例仅为71%。
• 只有54%的亚裔员工表示，他们了解获得下一次晋升所需的条件。
• 黑人员工得到的不具备可操作性的反馈比非黑人员工高出26%，尽管总体上黑人员工得到的反馈仅为非黑人员工的79%。
总体而言，书面反馈也强化了刻板印象（这会产生问题）。男性被称为“雄心勃勃”的可能性是女性的两倍，而女性被认为“乐于助人”的可能性是男性的两倍。
拉丁裔被描述为“有激情”的可能性是白人的两倍。与此同时，白人被描述为“容易共事”的可能性是亚裔的两倍。
换句话说，员工流失率最高的群体通常也会收到最无效的反馈。如果你不投资于员工的成长，他们就会离开。
这些问题已经持续了很长时间，但收效甚微，以至于各州和各城市现在都在探讨晋升透明法，要求企业在员工成长和晋升过程中确保公平和公正。
良好的管理和反馈流程很快就会得到立法支持，就像薪酬透明给员工带来的支持一样。我们已经知道这是如何产生影响的——91%的求职者，无论资历或行业，现在都表示，招聘信息中包含薪资范围会影响他们的应聘决定。员工期望晋升过程具有同样的透明度只是时间问题。
基兰·斯奈德（Kieran Snyder）是Textio的首席执行官。严马伦（Mallun Yen）（音译）是Operator Collective的创始人兼首席执行官。
《财富》杂志发表的更多必读评论文章：
• 强制重返办公室办公：就脱离企业程度而言，看看你属于哪一类
• 欧洲工商管理学院（INSEAD）的一项令人震惊的新研究显示，我们喜欢在工作中吹嘘自己成就的老板，却厌恶有同样做法的同事
• 职业倦怠正在侵蚀我们的大脑，使我们更难在工作中脱颖而出。“刻意保持冷静”可以帮助我们适应环境
• 美中贸易战适得其反——华为P60的芯片只是其众多不可预见的后果之一（财富中文网）
Fortune.com上发表的评论文章中表达的观点，仅代表作者本人的观点，不代表《财富》杂志的观点和立场。
译者：中慧言-王芳
虽然美国继续录得就业增长，但企业提供的工作岗位却越来越少。在这种情况下，当员工离职时，他们的职位往往得不到补充。留住现有团队比以往任何时候都更重要，而提供无效反馈是导致员工流失率高的主要原因。
Textio调查了导致员工流失的原因，其综合报告调查了各行各业的企业员工，研究了他们在正式绩效考核中获得的反馈与其留任率之间的关系。
我们清楚地认识到，无效反馈或反馈不足会导致员工流失。此外，我们的调查结果表明，并非所有的反馈结果都是平等的，而且并非所有员工都享有平等地获得反馈意见的机会。
得不到明确反馈的员工会辞职
根据今年的调查，38%的人正积极考虑离开目前的工作单位，或者已经开始去其他单位面试了。
在计划留任的受访者中，约有61%的人认同以下观点：他们了解获得下一次晋升所需要的条件（管理者对自己的期望）。在计划离职的受访者中，只有21%的人这样认为。
尽管人们提出了考虑新工作的各种原因，从金钱到更大的灵活性再到搬家，但最常见的几大原因与人们在工作中得到的反馈直接相关。事实上，17%的受访者明确指出，“反馈不足”是他们另谋高就的主要原因。许多其他受访者提到了与反馈相关的原因，比如“感觉怀才不遇”或“缺乏成长机会”。
并非所有反馈都同样有效
调查数据显示，员工收到的反馈与他们决定去留之间存在密切联系。我们还分析了绩效考核数据集，看看是否存在相同的模式。结果发现，收到无效反馈的员工一年后留在公司的可能性大大降低。
为了探究这个问题，我们研究了一家大型国际企业对不同职位的绩效评估。该数据集包含超过13,000名员工在两个年度评估周期内的绩效评估结果。由于我们拥有两个年度的数据，可以查看第一年数据集中的员工是否包含在第二年的数据集中。换句话说，我们可以查看每位员工的绩效相关书面反馈质量，以及他们第二年去留与否。
与收到更多具有可操作性反馈的员工相比，收到无效反馈的员工更有可能离开公司。更重要的是，这种影响是因果关系，而不仅仅是相关性：我们的分析控制了潜在的干扰因素，如数字绩效评级和员工任期。与其他人相比，收到无效反馈的员工离开公司的可能性要高出63%。无论他们是高绩效员工、中等绩效员工还是低绩效员工，情况都是如此。
如果考虑到无效、不具备可操作性反馈的普遍性，那么这种反馈就尤其成问题：在我们的数据集中，50%的人至少收到过一些不具备可操作性的反馈。
这还不是全部。避免给出直接反馈也会导致员工辞职。即使提供了反馈，也可能以间接或避免冲突的方式提供。这种闪烁其辞的做法很常见，即反馈提供者用委婉的语言表达他们的反馈意见。
闪烁其辞的现象（这会产生问题）很普遍，在今年的数据集中，有三分之一的人收到了这类反馈。考虑一下告诉你的报告“必须在本周完成初稿”和“可以考虑在本周完成初稿” 之间的区别。当管理者使用模棱两可的语言来提出要求（员工本应将其理解为一项强制性要求）时，就会淡化信息。
到目前为止，“我认为”是模棱两可反馈中最常用的短语。通过以“我认为”的陈述来表达反馈意见，管理者就是在向员工传达，他们的观点可能只是一己之见，而且可能并不完全确定。即使在正面反馈中，这也会产生问题，因为管理者会在不经意间传达出对其所给予的表扬持怀疑态度。例如，说"我认为你的演示非常亮眼"，而不是直接说汇报完成得很好。
这很重要。那些收到含有"我认为"这类模棱两可的表述的绩效评估的人在一年内离职的可能性比其他人高出29%。
高质量的反馈并不是平均分配的
反馈对留住员工很重要，但并不是所有人群都能得到同样高质量的反馈。就像去年的报告一样，所有女性（不论种族）和所有有色人种（不论性格）得到的反馈质量都较低，总体反馈数量也少于其他人。
例如：
• 83%的男性表示，他们了解获得下一次晋升所需的条件，而女性、非二元性别和变性人的这一比例仅为71%。
• 只有54%的亚裔员工表示，他们了解获得下一次晋升所需的条件。
• 黑人员工得到的不具备可操作性的反馈比非黑人员工高出26%，尽管总体上黑人员工得到的反馈仅为非黑人员工的79%。
总体而言，书面反馈也强化了刻板印象（这会产生问题）。男性被称为“雄心勃勃”的可能性是女性的两倍，而女性被认为“乐于助人”的可能性是男性的两倍。
拉丁裔被描述为“有激情”的可能性是白人的两倍。与此同时，白人被描述为“容易共事”的可能性是亚裔的两倍。
换句话说，员工流失率最高的群体通常也会收到最无效的反馈。如果你不投资于员工的成长，他们就会离开。
这些问题已经持续了很长时间，但收效甚微，以至于各州和各城市现在都在探讨晋升透明法，要求企业在员工成长和晋升过程中确保公平和公正。
良好的管理和反馈流程很快就会得到立法支持，就像薪酬透明给员工带来的支持一样。我们已经知道这是如何产生影响的——91%的求职者，无论资历或行业，现在都表示，招聘信息中包含薪资范围会影响他们的应聘决定。员工期望晋升过程具有同样的透明度只是时间问题。
基兰·斯奈德（Kieran Snyder）是Textio的首席执行官。严马伦（Mallun Yen）（音译）是Operator Collective的创始人兼首席执行官。
《财富》杂志发表的更多必读评论文章：
• 强制重返办公室办公：就脱离企业程度而言，看看你属于哪一类
• 欧洲工商管理学院（INSEAD）的一项令人震惊的新研究显示，我们喜欢在工作中吹嘘自己成就的老板，却厌恶有同样做法的同事
• 职业倦怠正在侵蚀我们的大脑，使我们更难在工作中脱颖而出。“刻意保持冷静”可以帮助我们适应环境
• 美中贸易战适得其反——华为P60的芯片只是其众多不可预见的后果之一（财富中文网）
Fortune.com上发表的评论文章中表达的观点，仅代表作者本人的观点，不代表《财富》杂志的观点和立场。
译者：中慧言-王芳
While the U.S. economy continues to add jobs, fewer of them are corporate. In this climate, when employees leave, their roles are often not backfilled. Retaining the team you have is more important than ever–and poor feedback practices are a major driver of high employee attrition rates.
At Textio, we investigated what’s driving all this attrition. Our comprehensive report involved surveying corporate employees across industries and looking at the relationship between the feedback they received in formal performance reviews and employee retention.
We clearly established that poor or insufficient feedback leads to employee attrition. Additionally, our finding shows that not all feedback is equal–and that not all employees are equal in the feedback they receive.
Employees who don’t get clear feedback quit
According to this year’s survey, 38% of people are either actively considering leaving their current workplace or have already ventured into interviews elsewhere.
Some 61% of respondents who plan to stay within the organization agree that they understand what their manager expects in order to give them their next promotion. Among people planning to leave their organizations, only 21% do.
While people indicated a variety of reasons for considering new roles, ranging from money to greater flexibility to relocation, several of the most common reasons cited tie directly to the feedback people get on the job. In fact, “insufficient feedback” was specifically named by 17% of respondents as the primary reason they’re looking for other roles. Numerous other participants cited feedback-adjacent reasons, such as “feeling underappreciated” or “lack of growth opportunities.”
Not all feedback is equally effective
The survey data shows a strong connection between the feedback an employee receives and their decision to stay or leave their organization. We also analyzed a performance review data set to see if the same patterns hold. As it turns out, people who received unactionable feedback were significantly less likely to be in the organization a year later.
To explore this, we looked at the performance reviews of a large, international enterprise organization across a variety of roles. The data set contains performance reviews for more than 13,000 employees across two annual review cycles. Because we have two years of data, we can see whether an employee in the Year 1 data set is also included in the Year 2 data set. In other words, for each employee, we can see the quality of their written performance feedback, as well as their retention or attrition outcome the following year.
People who received low-quality feedback were more likely to leave the organization than people who received more actionable feedback. What’s more, this impact is causal, not just correlational: Our analysis controlled for potentially confounding factors such as numerical performance rating and employee tenure. People who received low-quality feedback were 63% more likely to leave their organizations than everyone else. This held true whether they were high, middling, or low performers.
Low-quality, unactionable feedback is particularly problematic when you consider its prevalence: 50% of the people in our data set received at least some feedback that was not actionable.
And that’s not all. Shying away from giving direct feedback also causes employees to quit. Even when feedback is provided, it may be provided in conflict-avoidant and indirect ways. The practice of hedging, where the feedback provider couches their intended feedback in less direct language, is common.
The use of problematic hedging language is pervasive, with a third of people in this year’s data set receiving this kind of feedback. Consider the difference between telling your report, “You’ll have to finish the rough draft this week,” and, “You might consider finishing the rough draft this week.” When managers use hedging language to make an ask that the employee is meant to understand as a requirement, they dilute the message.
“I think” was by far the most common phrase used in hedging feedback. By introducing feedback with an “I think” statement, the manager is communicating that their point of view might just be a matter of opinion and that they might not be fully committed to it. This is problematic even in positive feedback, as the manager inadvertently communicates doubt about the praise they’re giving. For example, by saying “I think you did a good job on that presentation” rather than just stating that the report did a good job.
It matters. People who get performance reviews containing “I think” hedging statements were 29% more likely to leave the company within a year than everyone else.
High-quality feedback isn’t distributed equally
Feedback matters for employee retention, but not all demographic groups are equally likely to get high-quality feedback. Just as in last year’s report, women of all races and people of color of all genders received lower-quality feedback, and less feedback overall, than everyone else.
For instance:
• 83% of men said that they understand what’s required to earn their next promotion–in contrast to 71% of women, non-binary, and transgender people.
• Only 54% of Asian people said they understand what’s required to earn their next promotion.
• Black employees get 26% more unactionable feedback than non-Black employees, despite only receiving 79% as much feedback overall.
Taken in aggregate, written feedback also reinforces problematic stereotypes. Men were twice as likely as women to be called “ambitious”–and women twice as likely to be deemed “helpful.”
Latinx people were described as “passionate” at double the rate of white people. Meanwhile, white people were twice as likely as Asian people to be described as “easy to work with.”
In other words, the groups with the highest attrition rates from corporate workplaces also systematically receive the lowest-quality feedback. If you don’t invest in growing your people, they leave.
These issues have persisted long enough, with such little improvement, that states and cities are now exploring promotion transparency laws that will require organizations to ensure fairness and equity throughout their employee growth and promotion process.
Good management and feedback processes will soon have the same legislative support that pay transparency has brought workers. And we already know how that is playing out–91% of job seekers, regardless of seniority or industry, now say that including salary ranges in a job post would affect their decision to apply. It’s only a matter of time before employees expect the same transparency in the promotion process.
Kieran Snyder is the CEO of Textio. Mallun Yen is the founder and CEO of the Operator Collective.
More must-read commentary published by Fortune:
• Return-to-office mandates: See where you fall on the employee disengagement spectrum
• We love bosses who brag about their accomplishments at work–and loathe colleagues who do the same, surprising new research by INSEAD shows
• Burnout is attacking our brains and making it harder to excel at work. ‘Deliberate calm’ can help us adapt
• The U.S.-China trade war is counterproductive–and the Huawei P60’s chip is just one of its many unforeseen ramifications
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
