Seek and Ye Shall Find : An Empirical Examination of Seeking Real-Time Feedback on Employee Performance Evaluation

Many companies utilize real-time feedback applications to facilitate engagement and disseminate employee performance ratings. Yet, dynamics beyond giving and receiving employee feedback, such as seeking and rating feedback, are not well addressed in the literature. In order to fill this gap, we examine employee behavior related to two dimensions of real-time feedback: (i) seeking performance feedback from supervisors, peers, and direct reports; and (ii) evaluating the helpfulness of received performance feedback. Specifically, we examine the effects of feedback-seeking and rate-the-feedback behaviors on in-kind evaluations. After analyzing nearly 11,000 feedback instances from employees at four major organizations that utilize a real-time performance feedback application, we find that seeking feedback enhances constructive communication among colleagues through receiving a lower feedback score, a higher likelihood of receiving comments, and a longer and more positive comment. Feedback givers who opt not to provide comments or opt to provide shorter comments choose to provide feedback anonymously. We document that feedback seekers care less about feedback score and prefer longer comments when they rate received feedback. In order to solve the endogeneity problem, we use identification approaches such as instrumental variable and coarsen exact matching. Based on our results, we provide several interesting managerial insights that could be used by firms to manage feedback mechanisms