Regardless of the type or purpose of your organization, you probably collect data such as employee performance, post-project assessments, product reviews, and customer/client feedback. These kinds of feedback data are among the most important ways (and in some cases the only ways) to improve an organization's staff, teams, products, services, and the organization itself.

In fact, if you've been in business for more than five years, you probably collect a lot more feedback than you used to.

So, how often do you collect your organization's critical feedback? Annually? Quarterly? Monthly? As-needed?

Brace yourself, because this article is about to suggest that your organization almost certainly needs to collect, generate, and distribute more feedback. That is, instead of collecting feedback periodically, according to an arbitrary schedule, it's better to treat your feedback policies more like a finger on the pulse of your organization rather than something that's performed at lengthy intervals.

Here's an analogy. In the distant past, if you were staying in a hospital, a nurse or doctor would enter your room periodically, take your pulse, temperature, blood pressure, and other metrics, mark these measurements on a chart, and then leave. The data could of course be tracked through time, but it was periodic, and negative or positive developments could occur between the points of data. These days, of course, patients with even the most minor maladies will be hooked up to monitors that continuously track pulse, blood pressure, respiration, and blood oxygen. It should be obvious which is better.

Why implement this continuous, real-time approach to your organizational data? Well, first of all, most employees are hungry for feedback. According to Forbes Magazine, 65 percent of employees recently surveyed want more feedback, not less. And according to survey data reported by LinkedIn's business blog, 69 percent of employees surveyed said they'd work harder if their efforts were more meaningfully acknowledged.

In yet another poll, it was found that 83 percent of employees surveyed think it's better to get on-the-job praise than a corporate gift.

Likewise, when it comes to management, LinkedIn reported that managers who received regular feedback about their strengths were 8.9% more profitable.

And just in case you think that managers and employees only want to hear about their strengths and successes, get this--LinkedIn also reported that a whopping 92 percent of those polled agreed with the statement, "Negative (redirecting) feedback, if delivered appropriately, is effective at improving performance."

It's the same story with client and customer reviews regarding your products, services, and events. After all, what is a product review but employee/management from an outside source? Also, product and service reviews work both ways--corrective reviews can help your staff improve, while favorable reviews build trust and loyalty among your clients and customers.

According to the e-commerce blog Shift4Shop, just one positive product review can result in a 10 percent increase in sales for that product. Further, fifty reviews can result in a 30 percent lift, and 200 reviews can lift sales by 44 percent.

Okay, so you're convinced that collecting feedback in a "finger-on-the-pulse" way is better than something more periodic and arbitrary, but the time and effort required are daunting. No problem. This approach to a more-continuous and real-time feedback data collection is at the heart of Pulse For Good's mission. With our feedback-collection kiosk tools and consulting, your organization can begin to reap the benefits of more feedback, better feedback, and more continuous feedback right away.

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