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Learn how formative feedback can drive employee growth and engagement. Find tips for providing continuous, constructive feedback.
Cultivating employee growth and engagement requires more than annual performance reviews for today’s workplace. Formative feedback—continuous, constructive feedback that focuses on real-time improvement—can be a powerful tool for driving development, enhancing performance, and building a culture of learning. For HR professionals, team leaders, and business owners in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), understanding and implementing formative feedback can be a game-changer for fostering a high-performing and motivated workforce.
Formative feedback is feedback given regularly throughout the performance cycle, as opposed to summative feedback, which typically occurs after a set period (e.g., annual performance reviews). Formative feedback aims to help employees improve continuously, offering insights and advice when it matters most—while work is still ongoing.
Unlike summative feedback, which often focuses on results and outcomes, formative feedback emphasizes the process of improvement. It’s designed to guide employees by highlighting what’s going well and what can be adjusted, providing opportunities for real-time corrections, skill development, and performance enhancement.
While traditional performance reviews focus on past outcomes, formative feedback shifts the focus to ongoing growth and improvement. It’s an approach that helps employees enhance their skills and create a positive work culture where communication, trust, and collaboration thrive. Below are key reasons why incorporating formative feedback into your workplace can significantly impact employee engagement, retention, and performance.
Delivering formative feedback effectively is a key strategy for fostering employee growth and engagement. When done correctly, it helps employees adjust their approach and enhance performance and confidence. Here are the best practices to keep in mind to ensure your formative feedback is impactful and constructive.
While formative feedback focuses on immediate improvements and ongoing development, summative feedback serves as a more formal evaluation of performance over a longer period, often at the end of a project, quarter, or year. Both have their place in performance management:
However, these two forms of feedback aren’t mutually exclusive. A balanced approach that incorporates both can provide a comprehensive view of an employee's progress, offering immediate growth opportunities and a broader perspective on long-term performance.
Creating a feedback-rich culture requires commitment from leadership and an openness to continuous communication. Here are practical tips for implementing a formative feedback culture:
Formative feedback is an essential tool for fostering employee growth and engagement. Managers and HR professionals can create a culture that promotes continuous improvement, collaboration, and innovation by incorporating ongoing, constructive feedback into daily operations. It’s time to shift from traditional, infrequent evaluations to a more dynamic, feedback-rich approach—one that empowers employees to reach their full potential.
Adopt formative feedback practices in your teams today. By doing so, you’ll enhance performance, and innovation, and build a more engaged, motivated workforce ready to tackle the challenges of tomorrow. Schedule a demo with Assembly and we’ll help you foster engagement and ensure your employees feel valued.
Formative feedback is continuous, real-time feedback aimed at improving employees' performance as they work on tasks. It focuses on guiding improvement during the process. In contrast, summative feedback is typically given at the end of a performance cycle, like during annual reviews, and assesses overall performance, often tied to outcomes such as promotions or raises. While both have value, formative feedback is more effective for ongoing development and immediate corrections.
Formative feedback increases employee engagement by creating a supportive environment where feedback is given regularly, not just during formal reviews. Employees feel more valued and motivated when they receive constructive, actionable advice in real-time, allowing them to improve and grow continuously. This type of feedback builds trust and helps employees feel more connected to their work, leading to higher levels of engagement and job satisfaction.
Effective formative feedback should be specific and actionable. For example, after a meeting where an employee struggled with clarity in their presentation, a manager could say, “You did a great job explaining the key points, but I noticed the pacing was a bit fast. Let’s work on slowing down for the next meeting. We can practice together if that helps.” This type of feedback is timely, clear, and offers a solution for improvement.
Managers should aim to provide formative feedback regularly, ideally as soon as possible after observing behaviors or tasks that need improvement or commendation. This could be weekly, bi-weekly, or even daily depending on the nature of the work. The key is to give feedback while the task is still fresh, ensuring that employees can make adjustments immediately and continue progressing in their roles.
Get the foundational knowledge on creating an employee recognition program that boosts employee engagement and helps them feel valued.
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Yes, at Assembly, security is a top priority. Each quarter, we have ongoing security work that is everyone’s responsibility. While we maintain a strong security posture, it was important for us to prove to our customers that we do everything we claim to do. This led us to pursue a SOC 2 Type II report that would provide evidence of our compliance with industry gold-standard security practice.
There is study after study showing that employee recognition leads to increased engagement. This in return creates an environment where employees are happier and more motivated which increase productivity and reduces voluntary turnover significantly. In order to filled critical roles, companies tend to spend nearly twice the value of an annual salary. Assembly is an investment in your employees that supports your bottom line.
Yes, we will offer contracts for companies with longer-term agreements to help larger customers have more certainty around future costs.
The minimum agreement term is a 12-month subscription.
We do and for FREE! Any new customer needing further support to get started with Assembly to ensure you're set up for success can request custom onboarding support. Improving your employee experience is about much more than just using our amazing software; it’s about transforming your business to create a workplace that people love. That’s much easier to do with the personal support and advice from our passionate people experts.
At the time of redemption (when your employees exchange their points for a paid reward) you'll pay face value. If a reward is a $10 Amazon gift card, your cost will be $10. All paid rewards are billed for on a monthly basis.
The good news is that you don't have to pay for rewards upfront because we only charge you when points are redeemed, not when they're earned.
We offer discounts or educational or charitable organizations. In order to secure a discount, you'll first need to book a demo with a customer support specialist.
For all other organizations, we are willing to consider longer-term agreements in exchange for discounts. To set up annual plans or longer, you will need to book a demo with a customer support specialist.
If you're on a month to month plan, you can go here and cancel anytime. If you're having concerns or need help setting up your account for success, you can always book a demo with a customer support specialist.
If you're on a longer-term custom plan, you'll need to reach out to your customer support specialist to cancel your account or email us at support@joinassembly.com.
Great question! You can customize your core values to match your organization's to boost and track alignment. You can change your currency from the 🏆 emoji (our default) to any emoji of your choice. You can swap our logo for your own. You can also set up company culture rewards such as, "Lunch with the CEO," "Buy a book on us," and so much more!
While we recommend a peer to peer set up where anyone in your organization can give or receive recognition, you can set up Assembly however you want. If you need to limit the people who can give or receive recognition, that's perfectly fine and can be done from your Admin, here.
Assembly connects to the tools your employees use every day to offer an easy, seamless experience with minimal change management.
Assembly has integrations with HCM/HRIS systems like ADP, Google, Office 365, and Slack. We also integrate with communication tools like Slack and Teams so you and your employees can access Assembly wherever they work now.
That depends on the company's permissions set up. That said, over 90% of the employees on Assembly's platform are recognized on a monthly basis. That means nearly every employee across all of our customers are receiving regular recognition from their peers, managers, or leadership. We're extremely proud of this.
They are not required. You can use Assembly without having rewards set up. However, we don't recommend it if you intend to have a high adoption and usage rate. You can always keep the costs down by offering internal culture rewards that are fulfilled by you internally.
No, you can remove allowances from anyone or everyone. It's up to you but we do recommend using points whether they're worth a real dollar value or not. Companies that use points have a much higher engagement rate even if those points don't exchange for real dollars.
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