Here are a plethora of tantalising tips around the theme of 360-Degree feedback projects.

Getting more frequent and constructive feedback from different viewpoints can help your employees grow. It's also been shown to improve the employee experience as workers feel more appreciated. 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. 360 degree feedbackmay be contrasted with "upward feedback," where managers are given feedback by their direct reports, sometimes known as 180 degree feedback, or a "traditional performance appraisal," where the employees are most often reviewed only by their managers. The basic idea underlying 360-degree feedback is relatively simple: performance information from multiple sources can help people develop and improve their performance. This requires that the feedback be linked to developmental planning, goal setting, and organizational support. Participants must feel the 360 degree survey instruments are reliable and valid otherwise this multi-source approach can be viewed as problematic. Management has to ensure their employees are aware of the context in the survey to maximize accuracy and minimize bias in responses. Several inconsistencies and errors can arise in the feedback depending on a number of factors. The arguments for using 360-degree feedback for evaluation are that (1) the appraisal process should be just as comprehensive as the development process and that (2) individuals should be rewarded for having skills that the organization values, as seen from multiple perspectives. Proponents for using 360-degree feedback for appraisal believe that the data are only useful if they are shared with the supervisor and if they end in a development plan that is tied to results, as well as to subsequent organizational rewards and punishments.



It’s important that a person have some degree of input into who provides them with feedback. Research has shown that a person will act more on feedback if it comes from a person they trust. It stands to reason that if you don’t believe a person is credible, you wont give their feedback much credibility either. If behaviour is contextual then it then follows that 360, in providing data on perceptions of behaviour, is contextual too. A rating is a rating, it has no meaning in itself. If being very polite has one meaning in one country and a rather different meaning in another then you need to see the perceptions in this light. The idea of 360 degree feedbackis to start to understand what the meaning is in the eyes of those who are important to you. Just because 360 degree feedbackis anonymous doesn’t mean it is objective, there are many biases that can seep into the answers, these are particularly aggravated by ongoing conflicts between individuals and groups. I guess every office has its drama, but if the workplace is particularly toxic with many ongoing cold wars, you probably want to start with different tools to try to demine the playing field before you start a 360 degree survey. Customer involvement in 360 degree feedbackfacilitates top-to-bottom focus. Top-to-bottom alignment may be achieved by using an integrated set of validated feedback criteria for the 360-degree program throughout the organization. These criteria should be based on the organization's understanding of what will drive its competitive advantage and success. Achieving this alignment enables the 360-degree process to focus the entire organization on one set of strategic priorities. Supporting the big vision encompassing 360 feedback software will lead to untold career development initiatives.

It Is Possible To Make A Difference

360 review questions should focus on skills development, interpersonal relationships and an individual's demonstration of competencies and company values. Keep your questions short, simple and focused on one core area at a time. Make sure that your 360 review doesn't take participants longer than 15-20 minutes to complete. Otherwise you will have people losing interest in the process, especially over multiple review cycles. As a communication process, 360-degree feedback can provide an effective means of disseminating organizational standards. The items on a 360-degree feedback instrument communicate what is important or what behaviors are expected in the organization. 360 degree feedback/assessment is also known as a multi-rater or multi source feedback as feedback about the employee is gathered from multiple sources and not just the reporting manager as in the case of a traditional performance appraisal system. A good and constructive feedback helps in employee motivation as well as helping in hearing out the employee voice. Self-ratings are often a very important part of the 360-degree feedback process, even though ratings by others may be more accurate than self-ratings. Self-ratings require introspection-the process of looking inward and evaluating where one stands in relation to some effectiveness standard. Selfratings, within the context of 360-degree feedback, are the first step to development for the feedback recipient. As managers sit down and take time to fill out a questionnaire about their own effectiveness, they begin to think about and reevaluate their situation. The most important aspect of the 360 degree feedbackprogram planning phase is the design of the questionnaire to get feedback on. Before one jumps into designing the questionnaire, it is imperative to spend some time to ask and answer critical questions. The specificity/anonymity conundrum takes another turn when the idea of 360 degree feedback is involved.

All 360-degree feedback presents self-ratings and ratings from others on a variety of items and scales. People need help sifting through, prioritizing, and interpreting the large amount of data that can be produced in a feedback report of this type. For example, knowing that the average rating, across all raters, on a particular competency was 3.0 (on a 5-point scale) is not very informative and is hard to interpret. Yet, this score takes on more meaning if we know that the mean score for all other managers who have ever been rated is 2.5, and even more so if we know that direct reports rated the manager 2.5 and peers rated the manager 3.5. For best results with a 360 degree instrument, raters should be asked to rate leaders on behaviors associated with each competency area, instead of the overall competency. This helps pinpoint exactly which behaviors leaders need to change. Not only does a multiple rating system, such as the 360 degree review, help create more streamlined development plans, but it also ensures that those plans are aligned with the company’s and collaborators’ expectations. Simple multi-rater assessment examples clarify how they consider all essential attributes, such as an organization’s ability to ensure employee satisfaction or a leader’s ability to lead. There are very few people who end up being able to deliver very high 360 ratings across the whole picture of what is required for leadership. These are the total stars, the great all-rounders and the fabulously popular – very rare, and quite frankly, you would not wish for too many in an organisation anyhow! Constructive Feedback helps an employee understand that there are specific areas that need development. Specific (detailed) feedback provides the employee with information they can use to improve their performance. Organisations should avoid fear based responses when coming to terms with 360 degree feedback system in the workplace.

Critical Competencies

It is very difficult to be the primary lead on an initiative in HR but it is possible. Ideally though, you might want to find an inspiring leader in the business who is in a position of respected authority, eg CEO or COO, and look to see if you can be a primary follower for their cause. That is probably what HR was originally meant for – to help implement the vision of the leaders. Coworkers can sometimes allow unfair biases to taint their assessments of each other, which can create tension or even resentment in the workplace. This lack of trust can be detrimental to the overall performance and productivity of teams and the organization. Be an authentic leader. Be you. Whatever your style is make good use of it. Find others to support you if you are not great at various pieces. Be honest with others around you, be vulnerable, share how it feels. Be self-expressed. Find a coach if this is not coming easily – this is tough stuff. Ultimately, the relevance of a 360 degree program is measured by what the individual does when he or she goes home. This is why it is imperative that a development program emphasizes the importance of setting goals, and not only setting them but also following through on them. Organizations may want to have 360-degree feedback processes that involve large numbers of employees receiving feedback on a standard instrument on a regular basis. An on-demand, customized process does not preclude a more regular, standardized process, and vice versa. A more standardized process can ensure that all employees receive feedback (some may be more hesitant to seek it on their own), that they have an opportunity to receive feedback on a broad set of competencies, and that the organization has comparable data across employees. Researching 360 appraisal is known to the best first step in determining your requirements and brushing up on your understanding in this area.

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. At a broad level, HR can use 360-degree feedback to spot strengths and weaknesses across their organization’s entire leadership population, or specific segments of it. This approach can be particularly useful when you are trying to shift your corporate culture or solve an issue in a part of the company. With this information, you can create group-based development programs that focus on key gaps. Information from multiple sources offers the best method for measuring competencies. Traditional, single-source measures are deficient at assessing competencies because supervisors seldom have sufficient opportunity to observe each employee's full range of work behaviors. Managers usually take part in the 360-degree reviews of their direct reports. Given the close relationship between the two parties, the manager’s feedback is tracked, gathered, and delivered separately from the other reviewers. Managers generally have a deeper understanding of their direct reports than other stakeholders, and their perspective is often entirely different. If you look at your 360 degree feedbackdata from afar you will see the impression you are leaving people with – just like looking at an impressionist painting. There will of course be details within the data but you are only gathering some of those people who come across you at work so, no matter how good the instrument is, you will only have a portion of the data actually available; but, if the reviewers have been selected strategically and representatively, then the themes will tell the whole story. People need to feel in control of their destiny - that is why a clear understanding of what is 360 degree feedback is important to any forward thinking organisation.

The Power Of 360 Degree Feedback

There is a great deal of debate as to whether 360-degree feedback should be used exclusively for development purposes or for evaluation purposes as well. This is due primarily to feedback providers' subjectivity and motivations, inter-rater variations, and whether feedback providers have the ability to fairly evaluate attainment of work and organizational objectives. Any significant change in an organization requires an internal champion to orchestrate the project. Additionally, leaders and supervisors must support the project, and the organization should designate a person to be in charge of the 360 degree project. When no one has the responsibility for program administration, the system will fail. The respondents in a 360-degree feedback process are kept anonymous, identifiable only to the initiators (like CEOs or Human Resource departments) of the feedback process. It is also them who filter out comments or information that does not constitute constructive feedback. Unearth supplementary info relating to 360-Degree feedback projects on this NHS link.

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