I was working in the living room last week looking up 360 assessment projects and I put together this piece. What are your thoughts?

A lack of trust will undermine your 360 degree project. It will go smoothly if you are trusted as a project lead, if the 360 degree feedbacksystem is trusted, if the survey is trusted as relevant and robust, if the coaches are trusted to be professional, skilful and confidential, if reviewers are trusted to provide honest constructive feedback, if participants are trusted to respond maturely and if the senior leaders are trusted to follow through on promises regarding sight of personal data. In a surprising number of organizations, many employees are not experienced in either giving or receiving performance feedback. If top management allows this situation to occur, management and employees ignore the feedback process, pretending it does not exist. Although managers are paid to manage, many prefer to escape the tough task of providing feedback and coaching performance. 360 degree feedbackor multi-rater feedback facilitates anonymous input from various sources related to an employee. It usually involves eight to 10 people, all chosen because they work closely with a given employee. To run a successful business, you need your employees to thrive. Modern businesses recognize that typical performance measures aren’t enough to help their staff identify areas to improve and capitalize on the areas in which they’re successful. Importance scales in the 360 degree process help those providing feedback emphasize what they see as most important, and importance and performance measures together help employees target developmental areas. A low importance rating paired with a low performance rating may indicate a low priority for developmental attention. Conversely, a high importance score paired with low performance should alert the employee to turn attention to that area as soon as possible. In order to be effective, 360-degree reviews need the right participants — and the right method. Clearly, there are plenty of pros to 360 reviews. But they’re not without their challenges; like any review or feedback structure, if a 360 review isn’t administered to the right people, it might not generate the most effective, helpful feedback.



By participating in 360-degree reviews, employees learn to give feedback to their colleagues that motivates them to improve and strengthens their working relationships. Perhaps in the first review, not all feedback will be informative, but each time the effectiveness of the 360-degree review will increase over time. Over the years, organizations and management experts have experimented with using the 360 degree feedbackprocess as method for assessing performance. The challenge is that performance reviews attempt to measure a concept that is far different from what is measured when using a standard 360 degree Assessment. There is a lot at stake if you allow yourself to really look at the data and in a 360 feedback project this so easily means that you respond as if your very survival is at stake. Your primitive brain kicks in in milliseconds and this response will protect you as if your life is being threatened and it will be highly effective. Some people can be very negative about others in a 360 degree process and can hold on to damning opinions with great determination and significant impact on themselves and others around them. Some cultures seem to allow these attitudes to prevail, others do not give them any space. Once again, they are very challenging to deal with. Open conversations and tough mediation and coaching can make a difference though. Supporting the individual in being OK with others’ negative opinions is the usual strategy. The specificity/anonymity conundrum takes another turn when the idea of 360 feedback software is involved.

Use Of 360-Degree Feedback Today

Naturally, if a new assessment process is more accurate and fairer, users will want it to be extended to support performance appraisal and pay policies. When managers recognize the 360 degree assessments provide reliable information, they will begin using the results to support selection, placement, and succession planning. 360 degree feedbackserves as an integrator to human resources decision processes because higher-quality assessment information naturally replaces lower-quality information. 360 degree reviews can be an excellent growth and development tool for individual contributors. This type of review consists of feedback from the employee’s manager, a handful of peers, and any other people who have experience working with the individual. A key element in a development program that enhances the use of 360-degree feedback is a sense of safety-not only for the participant but also for the respondents to the instruments. If you’ve decided that you want to use 360-degree reviews within your organisation, then you’ll want to make sure you create a comparison chart. People like to see how they measure up to others. Designing a final report that shows how people compare to those in the top X% can help elevate aspirations. A 360 process can help to establish a level of comfort with the idea of giving and receiving feedback so that this becomes the norm. People need to feel in control of their destiny - that is why a clear understanding of 360 degree feedback system is important to any forward thinking organisation.

As organizations search for ways of doing more with less, performance measures will be recognized as the key to human productivity. An accurate assessment of an organization's success factors will help it hire new employees who are already strong on its core competencies. Accurate performance measures will correctly target training and development needs and provide a more precise measure of training effectiveness. With 360-degree feedback, there is an enormous amount of information to be absorbed. The feedback usually covers multiple performance dimensions, each being rated by multiple sources. For example, one 360-degree feedback survey we know of contains twenty-two performance ratings from self, supervisors, peers, and subordinates. This generates eighty-eight separate data points for the feedback recipient to digest. When it comes to 360-degree feedback, one size does not fit all. You need to design this form of review process specifically and tailor it to your workforce. Additionally, the questions you ask need to be targeted towards the data you hope to receive. Opinion polls are well used for 360 feedback in a number of different settings – most obviously when there is a race to be run or a brand leadership battle to be won. And they are notoriously difficult to interpret and near impossible to use to accurately predict as they are not the real thing. Ensure there will be no breaches of confidentiality in the 360 degree process, and that all the reviewers understand this. It’s difficult to provide critical feedback to a colleague, especially when you have to attach your name to it. So provide reviewers with the ability to give anonymous feedback, otherwise they might feel inclined to temper their responses rather than create disharmony in a team environment. Researching 360 degree feedback is known to the best first step in determining your requirements and brushing up on your understanding in this area.

Opportunities For Transformation

Technology innovations have improved the 360 degree appraisal scoring process. Outsourcing part or all of a 360 degree feedbackprocess may make sense when security is critical, such as with executive assessments, or when on-site administrative resources are limited. Automated outsourcing also can substitute PC diskettes for paper in an organization that lacks a network. Automation reduces administrative costs substantially because there is no need to handle outbound and inbound paper surveys. If a team member finds a piece of 360 degree feedbackunfair or unclear, managers might suggest they reach out to the feedback giver for clarification or even set up a meeting between the three of them to discuss it openly. Managers should encourage their team members to prepare open-ended questions ahead of time. 360 degree feedbackshould be used as part of the overall appraisal process but its purpose isn’t to measure performance. The process should be used for observations surrounding behaviour, rather than reviewing performance. Something to bear in mind when you're the subject in a 360 degree appraisal is that you don’t have to agree with all feedback. There’s no right or wrong and everything is open to your interpretation. Team members, similar to colleagues and direct reports, typically provide excellent feedback. In a sense, team members are colleagues, and when they have sufficient contact with the employee, they provide thoughtful and accurate information. Nonetheless, a keen understanding of 360 appraisal can be seen to be a multifaceted challenge in any workplace.

360 degree feedbackis one of the most powerful development tools. However, it can also be damaging to individuals if not implemented with care. In the first place, it should always be used for development rather than performance management as respondents are much less likely to be honest because of possible consequences. The purpose of multi-rater feedback, such as the 360 degree review, is to bring together varying perceptions from multiple sources within a work environment. Hence, the type of multi-rater assessment you choose usually determines its use cases. Content validity, also called logical validity, refers to the degree to which the items of a questionnaire or test represent all facets of a given social construct21. For example, an IQ questionnaire should cover all aspects of intelligence. Recognised subject experts make this assessment based on their subjective judgment. Multi-rater feedback, such as the 360 degree review, paints the complete picture of the subject’s performance, strengths, weaknesses, potential, and more. It encourages professional development for the feedback recipient and the raters. Moreover, it offers the opportunity to use feedback at every level of an organization to help develop talents, strategies and competencies. 360 feedback is a key part of continuous performance management, which is the process of providing regular, ongoing feedback to employees throughout the year. It aims to replace the traditional performance management model, which is over-reliant on the annual performance review. Continuous performance management aims to create an environment where feedback is given regularly, and teams can perform to their maximum potential. Keeping up with the latest developments regarding what is 360 degree feedback is a pre-cursor to Increased employee motivation and building the link between performance and rewards.

Benefits Of 360 Feedback

If the majority of reviewees have not previously participated in 360-degree feedback reviews, it is better to get them familiar with their reports in 1-on-1 meetings to avoid mistakes in the interpretation of the results. The 360-degree survey instrument chosen to measure a set of behaviors must be reliable and valid. If the survey is not reliable, there is no consistency of measurement from time to time, and the survey is just words on paper. Scores are the result of ambiguous and poorly worded questions, not real descriptions of real behaviors. If an instrument is not valid, there is no evidence that it measures what it purports to measure. People ought not to be asked to change their behavior based on a measure of management or leadership effectiveness if there is no evidence that the behaviors measured are critical to management or leadership effectiveness. Given the issues with objectivity and inaccurate data, it will come as no surprise that there is no evidence to suggest that 360 reviews actually improve company performance. In fact, one study found that such feedback was associated with a 10.6% decrease in market value, further stating that there is no data showing that 360-degree feedback actually improves productivity, increases retention, decreases grievances, or is superior to forced ranking and standard performance appraisal systems. Stumble upon extra info appertaining to 360 assessment projects at this Wikipedia page.

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