I don’t work in HR, I’m in IT, but I’m business partner to HR. To be clear, I work on IT projects that implement software solutions for HR.

That means that I’ve seen lots of payrolls, implement structures, I’ve been in project for the talent department (Selection processes, evaluations, and performance), etc.

So I’m not expert on the feedback part. But from my experience, it helps to be clear about what you want and how (feedforward) and then follow up (feedback) and try to take a look at how the work is coming if it is a long term task. So it is better to do both.

Junior people would need more feedback and examples. The more senior is supposed to need less feedback, but we have developed habits, some of them good, other bad. So if you need for a senior to change his/her ways, you might need to do follow up to or find ways that the senior can self-asses. And even then, some won’t change their ways.

And then you have the personality part. Some people don’t like feedback and you would need to find ways to tell them things that doesn’t look like feedback but are. For example, you can design KPI’s knowing that some employees would want to “game them” and “trick the system”. But if you do in a way that “gaming the system” means do what you want them to do, then they would end doing what you want without you having to explicitly say it. For example: Hour in a petion are only counted for closed petitions and you can only close a petition if all documentation is correctly added to it. So no longer is just about hours worked, it is about productive hours and complying with methodology (which usually is required by customers because SOX and other quality requirements).

You probably are already doing things like this. Most methodology is exactly about this. XD

Other important thing is to not make exceptions for “star employees”. That only encourages bad habits. Be consistent. People not only learn from what they are told, they learn from what they see. And in someone with bad habits get higher bonuses and more promotions, the message is “what that person is doing is the right way”.