Feedback at Goldman Sachs

As I mentioned in previous posts, our experience at work is defined by the daily interactions with the people around us: colleagues, managers, leaders, clients. When I think back on my own career, something I find myself doing more often these days, I feel incredibly fortunate to have met and interacted with countless people who invested in and cared about me. More often than not, the most meaningful developmental moments were not the formal sit-down conversations scheduled weeks in advance. Instead, they were the “timely” moments when a colleague or manager shared candid advice on how I could improve my next sales pitch, client meeting or even team meeting. This is the crux of our firm’s new system for facilitating real-time feedback – Ongoing Feedback360+. 

Everyone wants and needs feedback because it's what allows us to grow and realize our full potential. We built Ongoing Feedback360+ to help our people better understand what they are doing well and what areas they can improve. Here’s what we learned as we designed this new system.

1.    Identify your people’s needs

Through our biennial People Survey, half of our people told us that they want more ongoing, informal feedback on their job performance. This data was the centerpiece of the business case for developing Ongoing Feedback360+ and prompted an extensive research effort that ultimately informed the redesign of our annual performance review system and the launch of a new ongoing feedback system. The information we received from our people, encompassing both quantitative and qualitative data points, helped us build a solution that met our people’s needs and fit into our culture.

2. Bring different perspectives and expertise to the table

Our talent team, engineers, communication and branding experts and many others across different businesses came together to design our new system. Ongoing Feedback360+ is the product of close partnership and collaboration of colleagues at all levels across our organization. We relied on the varied experiences and expertise of several dozens of professionals to define our design principles and user requirements.

3. Involve end-users in the design process

Last year, we piloted Ongoing Feedback360+ to 10,000 employees. The pilot was an opportunity to test out ideas, respond to critiques and make the product better for everyone. Following the pilot, we hosted focus groups and conducted a survey to gather people’s ideas for enhancements – many of which were implemented for our firmwide roll-out. 

4. Engage and guide managers  

We know that managers play a major role in shaping their team’s experience at work. Therefore, it was important to develop targeted messaging and training to help managers as part of this initiative. Manager engagement and effectiveness is a continuing endeavor and a key theme for Ongoing Feedback360+.

5. Continue to innovate

We are at the start of our ongoing feedback journey and have in hand a pipeline of ideas to try – from how to further engage managers to how we encourage employees to give more frequent feedback. We learned a lot from the pilot and were able to improve the system – but we also know our work does not end here. We are committed to continuing to innovate, and most importantly, we will connect with our people at all levels to understand how to further improve their professional experience at the firm.

For me, this project reinforced that everything we do must be underscored by our culture. Whether it is launching a new initiative like Ongoing Feedback360+ or entering a new business, we need to make sure that it is right for our firm. This means engaging multiple stakeholders and getting input and buy-in from many people along the way – even if it takes more time and effort – because we know the end product will be better. In this case, that means making Goldman Sachs a better place to work.

View this guide to learn more about the ins and outs of Ongoing Feedback360+.