Enterprises, government organizations, and big businesses always look for the best-performing employee, manager, or leader. But how do such organizations evaluate the focus and motivation of such a staff? Read on to know the basics of the 360-degree evaluation process and some tools to help you choose the right employee or manager for promotions in your organization.
What Is a 360 Degree Feedback?
It is an employee evaluation process where the human resource manager or the leadership team collects anonymous and genuine reviews of an employee or manager. The raters (about eight or more) who provide feedback could be internal, external, or both. Hence, you may find customers, third-party vendors, contractors, peers, managers, and direct reports have been contacted for the 360-degree process. Since the process collects opinions from a circle of people with whom the subject interacts, hence the name 360-degree feedback. It has various corporate names, like:
Motivated feedbackMulti-source feedbackMulti-rater feedback
It helps the leadership team to identify which employee is ready for further movement into the organizational hierarchy. Also, multinational businesses that value employee development utilizes this tool to create learning models. Above all, the subject of the evaluation finds out how effective they are in their current designation, strengths, and weaknesses.
The Benefits of 360 Degree Feedback
#1. The report of such an analysis makes an individual more conscious of their strengths, weaknesses, personality, beliefs, motivations, and focus. Thus, it becomes easier for them to choose the proper training. #2. The positive feedback from multiple sources drives motivation within the subject for further development of the skills that others liked. #3. Agents, associates, trainers, and managers linked to customer service operations can improvise the entire service process if clients and consumers participate in the rating process. #4. The questionnaire of the rating process consists of values and behaviors that the company considers essential for it. Hence, the respondents of the online form also become aware of these values. #5. A 360-degree process of people evaluation is more decentralized, genuine, and bias-free than feedback from the reporting manager.
What Does a 360 Degree Feedback Measure?
#1. The survey gauges the competencies of the focus (the subject of assessment). #2. It also assesses the professional behavior of the employee. #3. You also find a tangible measurement of planning, listening, and SMART goal-setting capacity. #4. They focus on understanding how their colleagues and customers perceive them. #5. Get a precise effectiveness study on subjective skills like character, leadership, and teamwork.
What Does a 360 Degree Feedback Not Measure?
#1. It shall not help you understand whether the subject meets essential job requirements. #2. Also, you can not use this tool to measure highly objective metrics like sales figures, attendance, punctuality, etc. #3. The process is not the method to gauge the individual’s performance objectives. #4. Multi-source feedback does not quantify job-specific skills, technical abilities, etc.
Performance Review Vs. 360 Degree Feedback
The performance review and multi-rater feedback can exist side by side because there are nuanced differences between the two. A 360-degree process mainly focuses on finding the right candidate for further growth within the leadership chain. Whereas performance review simply determines the compensation and perks of an employee. Find below some more contrasts among the two methods.
1. Context of Assessment
Motivated feedback gathers subjective and objective comments about the subject from multiple sources. Then, it compiles the data into an insightful report. On the contrary, performance appraisal is only a tool to decide the year-on-year raises for an employee according to their regular job-based metrics.
2. Objectives of the Processes
360-degree evaluation is a continuous process where the main aim is the development of the subject. It can happen frequently. On the other hand, the performance review is a finite process. The company can hold it bi-annually, annually, or never, depending on its profits.
3. Competition for Benefits
It displays a notification on the top of the 360-degree feedback form that salaries or bonuses will not be calculated based on such assessments. Thus, raters share accurate or honest feedback about the focus subject of the assessment. In contrast, the performance review is highly competitive. Each employee is racing for the best pay packages.
4. Mode of Assessment
A motivated feedback survey form invites anonymous comments from the raters. Since the goal is to pave the way for professional and personal developments, the opinions could be harsh and excessively frank. On the contrary, a performance appraisal can not be anonymous, and the subject knows their ratings, feedback providers, etc.
5. How to Perceive
There is no material outcome from multi-source feedback since it only helps in the passive development of the focus. In contrast, you can feel the results of your performance review since your salary or perks may increase or decrease depending on the ratings.
How to Create a 360-Degree Feedback?
Motivated feedback varies from industry to industry. Then within an organization, it changes according to skills, designation, business verticals, and son. Hence, there are no set criteria. However, you can observe the following policies when creating one:
1. Train Raters
The success rate of the 360 evaluation exercise will depend on the survey awareness of the raters. Therefore, before starting the survey, educate the raters on how to answer correctly. Your training could be a short video or PDF file, depending on the effort and technology you want to invest in this process. Training will also ensure constant results whenever you conduct the assessment. Finally, creating awareness among the reviewers will help you gather honest feedback anonymously without the chance of the reviewer revealing the questions and answers to the subject.
2. Set the Goal
Set a transparent goal for the 360-degree feedback and ensure reviewers know the objective. Sometimes, raters perceive the survey as a performance appraisal tool for the subject. Then, they might misguide you by providing wrong feedback. Mention that the exercise is only for developmental purposes. According to the survey, you will not decide on the subject’s pay package.
3. Involve Stakeholders
Someone from the leadership team or higher managers should also interact with the team of raters and subjects, the overall team. It enables subordinates to know their managers and vice versa. The success of the evaluation process solely depends on raters who know the subject. Hence, if you are the assessment administrator and are unsure if raters know the subject well, you can ask the reporting manager to find out more. Business stakeholders can also take appropriate executive decisions on creating a development plan for the assessee because training and development come with a cost.
4. Focus on Strengths
When creating the survey questions, focus on personal and professional strengths that grow naturally. It helps you drive exponential growth of the subject, increasing the assessee’s talent and agility.
5. Know the Questions That You Want to Ask
You must set a standard for the questions and how to collect answers. First off, do not burden the rater with hundreds of questions. Understand that the individual may need to fill the survey for multiple employees. Ideally, there should be 30 to 40 questions. Create questions focusing on 8 to 10 competencies related to your company goals. Do not increase the review scope much to avoid survey fatigue. Agree to disagree scale is suitable for such surveys.
6. Personalize the Program
You must build a 360-degree feedback survey based on your company’s competency model. You can also make a hybrid model, considering you refer to questions from a similar company that conducted the test for an employee of the same designation. Do not copy-paste questions from third-party company websites and human resource web content publishers because such 360-degree evaluation templates may not be relevant to your business model.
7. Know the Outcome of a 360-Degree Feedback
Apart from creating the survey, you also need to analyze the data and publish a result for the subject. Also, you need to sit with other stakeholders to plan a development roadmap for the individual based on the survey results. Advanced online tools come with competencies to run the whole process, like running the survey, analyzing data, creating the 360-degree assessment map, and suggesting training. Now that you have gone through the basics, it is time to learn some tools to help you run the evaluation process.
Spidergap
Looking for a dedicated platform for secure, discrete, and worry-free 360-degree feedback assessment for small to enterprise-level businesses? You can check out Spidergap. It offers you personalizable forms so that you can add questions that are relevant to your industry. The survey builder is a cloud-based web app that opens on any computer device. Also, a drag-and-drop question editing option lets you create a survey fast. Moreover, you can download a survey template and get it approved by the manager before running the assessment.
Personio
Personio is a famous brand for business workflows focused on the company’s people. It offers various other HR products, including 360-degree feedback automation tools. The standard tool, Performance Management Software, helps you to run multi-rater feedback, performance appraisals, goals setting, and share performance reviews. Its utterly digital process lets you quickly share the survey with raters. You can gather truly anonymous data and analyze the 360-degree evaluation data securely. The product has flexible subscription plans to scale up or down according to your requirements.
Mettl 360 View
Mettl 360 View is not just another multi-source feedback tool. Apart from the entire survey process, it helps you with the following as well:
Identify the high potential individual with extraordinary business, leadership, and agile development skills.Scan the survey form to find employee weaknesses and suggest training materials.Harmoniously link a 360-degree feedback study with a performance review for yearly appraisal exercises.
Moreover, the survey comes with powerful personalization options, open-ended feedback, and an elaborate competency summary of the subject.
Qualtrics
Qualtrics is yet another reliable name for experience management solutions in various industries. One of its tools that enable you to run performance evaluation, 360-degree processes, and more is EmployeeXM. Some notable features are:
Faster and simpler feedback forms that raters like to complete eagerly.Fully automated process with no paperwork.Advanced confidentiality feature that protects raters’ identity effectively.Send personalized results to the subjects.Assists managers and leaders in engaging with the subject in actionable conversations by offering analytics and trends from the survey.
Moreover, you can complete the entire development lifecycle of thousands of employees from one centralized tool accessible from a simple web browser.
My360+: Eloomi
My360+ tool is also worthy of your time if you are looking for an effortless platform for all things about multi-rater feedback. It lets you create a 360-degree evaluation process with skills and questions your business values. You can also customize the skills board and questions whenever you want. Furthermore, running the feedback gathering process is pretty straightforward. Simply choose an employee and request feedback from other employees with whom the subject interacts. The raters receive secure links for commenting along with options for star ratings and comments.
Final Words
So far, you have gone through the basic theory of the 360-degree feedback process. It is one of the best workflows to pick the best in your company and move that individual to a higher designation. Additionally, it helps individuals to understand “how are they motivated?” and “what should be their focus?” Also, you have discovered some excellent online resources that help you produce and execute actionable and bias-free motivating feedback. You may also be interested to learn “what is root cause analysis?” if you want to manage business projects without fail.
