Advice

Why Your Company's Feedback System is Broken (And How I Learnt This the Hard Way)

Three months ago, I watched a brilliant account manager quit during what was supposed to be her "development conversation."

Not after. During.

She stood up, said "This is ridiculous," handed over her laptop, and walked out whilst her manager was mid-sentence explaining why her performance rating was "meets expectations" despite bringing in $2.3 million in new business that year.

That moment crystallised everything I'd been thinking about feedback systems in Australian workplaces. They're not just broken—they're actively destroying the very thing they're meant to improve.

The Annual Performance Review Charade

Let me be blunt: 90% of annual performance reviews are a complete waste of everyone's time. I've been on both sides of this equation for over 16 years, and I can count on one hand the number of meaningful conversations that emerged from those sterile, tick-box exercises.

The problem starts with timing. Once a year? Seriously? Imagine if you only got feedback on your driving once every 12 months. You'd either crash the car or develop some seriously questionable habits along the way.

But it's not just frequency. It's the entire framework that's fundamentally flawed.

Most companies use these one-size-fits-all rating systems that reduce complex human performance to a number between 1 and 5. As if Sarah from marketing and Dave from operations can be measured using identical criteria. It's like using the same recipe to bake a cake and grill a steak—technically possible, but you're going to ruin at least one of them.

I remember implementing what I thought was a "revolutionary" continuous feedback system at a consulting firm in 2018. Spent months designing it, getting buy-in from leadership, training managers. The whole nine yards.

Within six months, it had devolved into the same meaningless ritual we'd replaced, just with fancier software and more frequent meetings. The fundamental issue wasn't the system—it was our approach to feedback itself.

The Sandwich Method is Stale Bread

Can we please, for the love of all that's holy, stop teaching the feedback sandwich?

You know the one: positive comment, criticism, positive comment. It's supposedly meant to "soften the blow" of constructive feedback. In reality, it teaches people to dismiss praise as setup for criticism and makes genuine recognition feel hollow.

I've watched managers contort themselves into pretzels trying to find something positive to say about genuinely poor performance just to bookend their actual concerns. "Your presentation was... well-structured... but the content was completely wrong and you missed every deadline... but your PowerPoint fonts were consistent!"

Meanwhile, high performers learn to brace themselves whenever they hear praise because they know the "but" is coming.

The sandwich method assumes people are fragile children who can't handle direct communication. Most professionals I've worked with prefer honest, specific feedback delivered with respect rather than sugar-coated nonsense wrapped in false positives.

The Real Problems (That Nobody Talks About)

Here's what's actually broken about most feedback systems:

Manager Training is Abysmal

We promote people to management roles based on technical competence, then act surprised when they struggle with difficult conversations. Teaching someone Excel formulas doesn't magically give them emotional intelligence or communication skills.

I've seen brilliant engineers become terrible managers because nobody taught them how to have a performance conversation that doesn't sound like code review. Effective communication training should be mandatory before anyone manages people, not an afterthought when problems emerge.

Fear-Based Cultures

In too many organisations, feedback flows one way: down. When was the last time you saw a manager genuinely seeking feedback from their team without it being part of some mandatory 360-degree review process?

I've worked in places where suggesting improvements was seen as criticism of leadership. Where "we've always done it this way" was considered a valid response to well-researched proposals. Fear kills honest feedback faster than anything else.

Documentation Obsession

HR departments have turned feedback into a legal defence strategy rather than a development tool. Everything must be recorded, categorised, and filed in case someone sues later.

This creates bizarre situations where managers avoid giving feedback until problems become serious enough to warrant formal documentation. By then, it's too late for development—you're already in performance management territory.

What Actually Works (From the Trenches)

After years of getting this wrong, here's what I've learnt actually improves performance:

Contextual Feedback

The best feedback happens in the moment, when context is fresh and specific. Not three months later during a scheduled review when nobody remembers exactly what happened.

I've started encouraging active listening training for managers because half the feedback problems I see stem from people talking past each other rather than understanding what's actually happening.

Forward-Focused Conversations

Instead of dissecting what went wrong last quarter, focus on what needs to happen next quarter. Past performance matters, but only insofar as it informs future decisions.

This shift in perspective changes everything. Instead of defensive justifications, you get collaborative problem-solving. Instead of blame, you get ownership.

Peer Feedback Networks

Some of the most valuable feedback I've received came from colleagues, not managers. They see day-to-day work patterns that supervisors miss. They understand the practical challenges of implementation in ways that leadership often doesn't.

Creating formal systems for peer feedback requires cultural maturity, but when it works, it's transformative.

The Australian Context (Because We're Different)

Let's be honest about our cultural quirks. Australians generally prefer direct communication over corporate speak, but we also value fairness and egalitarianism. Traditional feedback systems often conflict with both tendencies.

The hierarchical nature of most performance reviews sits uncomfortably with our cultural expectation that everyone deserves a fair go. When feedback feels like judgment from on high rather than collaborative improvement, it triggers our natural resistance to authority.

We're also naturally suspicious of processes that feel like they were imported from American business schools without consideration for local context. The enthusiastic corporate-speak that works in Silicon Valley often falls flat in Surry Hills.

I've found that informal feedback conversations over coffee often achieve more than formal review processes in Australian workplaces. There's something about removing the power dynamics of office hierarchies that makes honest communication possible.

Technology Won't Save Us

Before you start shopping for new performance management software, understand that technology amplifies existing problems rather than solving them.

A broken feedback culture with better software is still a broken feedback culture—it just generates more detailed reports about its dysfunction.

I've seen companies spend hundreds of thousands on sophisticated platforms that track every metric imaginable, only to discover that their fundamental communication problems remain unchanged. The software becomes another bureaucratic layer rather than an improvement.

The most effective feedback systems I've encountered rely more on cultural norms than technological solutions. Clear expectations, regular check-ins, and managers who actually care about development will always outperform the fanciest software platform.

Starting Small (Because Revolution Rarely Works)

If you're frustrated with your current feedback system, resist the urge to overhaul everything at once. Change needs to be gradual and sustainable.

Start with one team. Train one group of managers properly. Implement one improvement and measure its impact before moving to the next.

I've learnt this lesson repeatedly: ambitious system-wide changes usually fail because they require too many people to change behaviour simultaneously. Small improvements that actually stick are more valuable than grand transformations that collapse under their own weight.

The Bottom Line

Your feedback system probably is broken, but not for the reasons you think.

It's not broken because you need better forms or more frequent reviews or fancier software. It's broken because it treats feedback as a performance management tool rather than a development conversation.

When feedback becomes about documentation rather than improvement, everyone loses. Managers hate giving it, employees hate receiving it, and actual performance rarely improves.

The solution isn't more feedback—it's better feedback. Specific, timely, actionable, and delivered by people who genuinely want to help rather than protect themselves legally.

Fix the culture first. Everything else is just administrative detail.

And maybe, just maybe, we'll stop losing brilliant people during their "development conversations."

Got thoughts on feedback systems? Disagree with everything I've said? Good. That probably means you're paying attention. The worst feedback systems are the ones nobody complains about because nobody expects them to work anyway.