Forum: There may be consequences for being 'too loud' with feedback

I refer to the letter "Bosses need to provide safe environment for employee feedback" (Aug 30).

As with most policies, it's always easy to craft one, but implementation and execution are another matter, especially for big organisations with various divisions and departments with many layers of bosses.

My experience tells me that for bigger organisations, the spirit of such policies may not permeate through the various layers of management.

Bosses do not deal directly with rank and file. Middle managers are the ones who do so and they may not take kindly to negative feedback. Such feedback may reflect on them or could lead to changes which they frown on.

In fact, they frown on those who give feedback.

I learnt this lesson when I took up the invitation of the management in one company I worked at to provide feedback to enhance corporate performance.

The consequences dawned on me one day when an assistant manager told me I was not popular because I had been "too loud for too long".

To nurture and cultivate a culture of feedback, perhaps we should first educate management at all levels that lovers must be critical and critics must be loved.

Only employees who care for their company enough will bother to critique it. And such critics must in turn be loved by management, not frowned on or black-marked. This will let the culture of feedback flourish.

Otherwise, if it's the apathetic who are wrongly loved instead, then the idea of employee feedback will just be another idealistic management concept doomed to fail even before it can take off.

Goh Khang Khai

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