The importance of feedback in a virtual work environment

One might think that when working with someone miles away, feedback would be difficult, or something left at the bottom of the activities list. You might be surprised to know that it’s quite the opposite. When there’s no face to face interaction, feedback can be more honest, more direct, it takes less time and will give you better results. There are simple reasons for that.

First, as we all know, feedback is helpful information or criticism about prior action or behavior from an individual, communicated from another individual or a group, who can use that information to adjust and improve current and future actions and behaviors. It can also help to make better decisions and it allows us to build and maintain communication with others.

All this makes people on the team more engaged in the work process. They will show more involvement and loyalty once giving feedback becomes a regular practice. And in a virtual environment, when you’re employees are not on the same building, city or country as you, feedback can be a lot more effective than having them inhouse. Why? Because of:

Honesty

We can be friends. But we need to help each other improve and be successful. When dealing with face to face interactions it can sometimes get awkward or even difficult to be direct and truly honest when giving feedback. Especially if you’re going to criticize or talk about something going wrong. In a virtual environment, we can also be friends but it’s been proven that friendships and relationships actually get stronger when individuals can go straight to the core of the problem, deal with it and move on. People take things less personal, without letting the feedback hurt their feelings in any way. And that’s good because the bar is going to be set higher than normal.

Higher standards

Yes, when dealing with physical distance, the measuring standards for quality have to be higher than normal. That will always be good for an organization. Because the workers are always on their toes, since they know that they not only have to be good, they also have to prove it. And when being miles away, the only way to prove it is with results.

Results

All of this means that results will be on the top of the list of priorities. As with any other job, the process is important, how you do it is important and feedback will help you every step of the way. Everytime we speak to a person, employee, customer, vendor, we communicate feedback. And always, when getting good results, give performance appraisal to the individual or group responsible for that, and make sure everyone else knows about it. It will motivate them to perform better.

The virtual workforce makes it easier

And if you’re hiring a virtual workforce company for this, they will handle the feedback with the agents. They will make weekly feedback calls with their agents. Apart from that, they will also have feedback sessions with you. You can be a part of the feedback as much as you can. Most CEOs trust their virtual workforce solution feedback dynamic and they only have to worry about results. At the end of the day, that’s why we’re all here for. 

About us: CC Capital Group is a virtual workforce company based in Southern California. We’re A+ Rated on Better Business Bureau and working with more than 100 U.S companies from small and large businesses to Fortune 500 and Inc. 5000 firms.

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