Finding & developing the right feedback system

In today's fast-paced business environment, continuous development of employees and teams is crucial. For a company like Code Factory, now with just over 150 employees, an effective feedback system is a key factor in supporting employee development and fostering a positive company culture. My name is Britta Pröfrock and I am responsible for people development at Code Factory. Among other things, I'm in charge of all things feedback and I'm the "Super Admin" for our feedback platform LEAPSOME.

written by Britta Pröfrock, Personnel Development Manager

Let's start at the beginning.
When I joined Code Factory more than 3.5 years ago, the whole feedback issue had to be built up in the organization. It was one of my most important tasks.
There was a huge need for employee conversations. In the beginning, I had about 120 conversations myself and asked the employees to ask their colleagues for feedback with 4 reflection questions in a WORD document. Yes, a Word document. This was then sent back to me as a PDF.

The good thing: I introduced 360-degree feedback to Cofa. It was a kind of guerrilla marketing, but it worked. Cofa employees responded very positively. Feedback recipients were often surprised at how much thought their colleagues had put into giving them meaningful feedback.
The downside: You can imagine how much effort was involved, and that this was not possible in the future. So I quickly started looking for a platform or tool that would meet our needs and allow for automation and scalability.

My first big lesson when looking for a tool: Check GDPR compliance FIRST... and then the rest. 😉

I'm a big fan of non-anonymous 360 degree feedback, because it gives you the opportunity to get very concrete feedback from different perspectives by inviting colleagues and stakeholders you really work with. And if you get constructive criticism, you can talk about it. This gives you the opportunity to better understand and truly learn.

Non-anonymous feedback also promotes transparency within the organization. Employees know who is providing specific feedback, which helps build trust among team members. In a company with 150 employees, this open communication can help break down barriers and create a positive work environment.

With LEAPSOME, I found a suitable platform that supports the 360-degree approach and implemented it within 4 weeks. This of course included the development of a process and a timeline. There was an introductory training for all employees and now all new employees get a one-hour introduction as part of their onboarding. We have regular feedback training from an external provider, and I have also conducted internal feedback training in small groups.

We have also evolved our organizational structure. There are clear responsibilities for employee issues, such as conducting regular review meetings. And we are continuously working on improving leadership in our organization. We have developed a softskill framework for all employees and dedicated hardskill frameworks for each chapter. These are also integrated into the platform and are part of every feedback cycle.

We have been using LEAPSOME for 3 years now. It is one of our basic tools and is used by all employees. However, we are aware that it's an ongoing task to work on our feedback culture and we will continue to do so.