Getting your PHR Certificate: Studying Feedback

You have to be able to get the appropriate feedback from your employees if you want to get your PHR certificate.  While the PHR exam includes a variety of different topics, one major topic is always the situations wherein you need to be able to extract the desired feedback from your employee.

Feedback is very important to advance the company goals and objectives.  HR managers should always make sure that they get the best feedback possible from their subordinates.  The key in getting the right and most accurate feedback is the line of questioning.  You should be able to ask the right questions to the right people at the right time.  PHR certificate holders should be able to do this easily, so of course the ability to do so is tested during the PHR.

Most of the time, feedback is given to poorly performing employees.  Managers always think that these individuals are deliberately giving poor performance since they already know what to do yet are not doing it.  Surprisingly, those are the two things that are the major factors in why employees are performing badly – they genuinely don’t know what they need to be doing, or they don’t know how they should be doing it.

Managers should be able to ask questions to determine if their employee needs assistance on an area that they are not performing.  Never publicly provide negative feedback on a person, or on a specific person’s idea or system.  If you are giving feedback to a non-performer, it is better to provide a neutral feedback and make them aware of their current situation.  You have to make them aware that they are not performing since they cannot fix it if they do not know it is broken.  Then, you can work together to create the best solution.  It is recommended that you let the employee talk about the solution so that they will not have a hard time implementing it — they believe their own ideas more than they believe yours.

The ability to elicit effective feedback is crucial if you want to earn your PHR certificate, so make sure you’ve mastered the skill before you apply to take the test!