Making good decisions about 360 assessment processes requires us to counteract the supposedly antithetical forces of emotion and rationality. We should be able to guess the future, accurately recognise the current situation, have insight into the minds of others and deal with ambiguity. 360 degree technology should help administrators create workflows that help them manage all aspect of their programs. This includes collecting and tabulate feedback results, providing dashboards so administrators can see what is happening at each stage within each of their 360 degree feedbackprograms and helping data users understand the feedback and results with effective data visualizations and report flows. For several reasons, 360-degree feedback has become a popular technique in organizations today. The complexity of jobs requires that employees have feedback from a variety of constituencies, not just their supervisor, who has traditionally been the source of feedback and performance review. Also, organizational restructuring and downsizing place the burden of development on the employee. One of the key components of 360 degree feedbackis that it takes multiple different perspectives and viewpoints. Particularly for smaller organizations this may cause some problems, as it will be more difficult to gather a full 360 degree view. Implementing a 360 degree feedbacktool is a great way to accelerate your personal development or that of your employees. Through honest feedback and constructive criticism, a 360 assessment will provide you with valuable insight that you wouldn’t be able to get otherwise. The whole 360 degree feedbackprocess can be done initially with technology, using questionnaires, surveys and evaluation tools that are submitted online. By doing this element confidentially, it allows the participants to give thorough feedback without fear and it also provides insights that may not have come out if they weren’t confidential. Multisource systems are more accurate, credible, and valid than single-rater systems. Academic and field research provide compelling evidence that multisource assessments are fairer than single-source systems. Does it make sense to ignore the best information available when making decisions about appraisal, pay, and promotion? Challenge any negative decisions and conclusions in a 360 degree feedbacksession. Even if you are suspicious that they may be right, it is not helpful for anyone to draw conclusions direct from data. Come right back to them with a “How can you be so sure?”, or clarify that it does not mean this at all, and describe exactly what the data is saying instead. Check other parts of the report and see if it is all backing up their conclusion – it may or may not be. Some 360 degree feedbackparticipants project blame when a whole situation is blamed on a person or a thing. This is where they are clearly not taking responsibility for their own situation. Very tricky, especially when others may indeed have acted out of line and are to blame for some stuff. The integrity of your process is critical though to make sure there is nothing significant they can realistically “blame”. Let us assume that you want people in your organisation to shift, then the key point here is that data can provide that trigger. New insights are a critical part of the transformational process. How can you have insights without new data or a new view of data you already know? It is not simply that data will tell you the “truth” when you did not already know it – for there is no “truth” about a situation. If employers want to see changes, they must do their part to help employees stay accountable. Leaders should periodically review their employees’ progress during the six- to 12-month time frame. Employees can ask questions, and managers can offer guidance and coaching. Nonetheless, a keen understanding of 360 appraisal can be seen to be a multifaceted challenge in any workplace. Competency Headings Some organizations create 360 degree feedbacknorms or organizational score averages for comparison. Each employee receives feedback showing not only a personal score for each item but also the group average. These comparisons can be devastating to employees. Such is the impressiveness of the 360 degree feedbacksystem that over 90 percent of Fortune 1,000 firms have utilised some form of multi-source assessment. However almost 50 percent reported unsatisfactory experiences. Yet those for which the process has worked report substantial improvement. The 360 degree feedbacksystem provides excellent performance management support because it pinpoints the employee's areas of strength and areas in need of development. The behavior feedback from multiple sources is typically both comprehensive and specific. Using a 360 degree feedbacksystem for Performance Appraisal is a common practice, but not always a good idea. It is difficult to properly structure a 360 feedback process that creates an atmosphere of trust when you use 360 evaluations to measure performance. Homemade applications may work when introducing multisource assessment, especially when used for development-only feedback and in small groups. However, as users become more sophisticated, they want additional features that are likely to be beyond the capacity of a simple home-grown computer program. Consequently, the investment in in-house-created technology must recur regularly to keep up with user needs and improvements in computer technologies. Keeping up with the latest developments regarding 360 feedback software is a pre-cursor to Increased employee motivation and building the link between performance and rewards. It is best to display open-text feedback in the 360 degree report with clear headings and a formatting which accurately shows where one person’s view starts and stops. You will get more value from this data if it is spread through the report and physically close to the data it is pertinent to, so the participant can look at the data and immediately get the explanation or further elaboration. The amount and level of training in 360-degree feedback for both the rater and ratee can affect the level of accuracy of the feedback. If no guidance is given, individual bias may affect the rater's ratings and the ratee's interpretation of the feedback. However, even with training measures in place, unconscious bias may still occur due to factors such as the cultural influences or relationship quality between the rater and ratee. 360-degree feedback is one of the best methods for understanding personal and organizational developmental needs in your organization. You may discover what keeps employees from working successfully together and how your organization's policies, procedures, and approaches affect employee success. In many organizations that use 360-degree feedback, the focus has switched to identifying strengths. That makes sense for employee performance development. The benefits to be reaped by implementing a 360 degree feedbacksystem in terms of performance increased through transparent communications and greater self-awareness are too immense to ignore, despite its challenges. It is valuable to speak with a trusted peer or direct report to gather more information. We always say that 360-degree feedback is only the beginning of becoming a better employee or leader. The follow-up conversations often provide more insight than the report itself. 360 degree surveys “break the ice” in feedback-poor environments and create a culture where open performance conversations are valued and encouraged. Organisations should avoid fear based responses when coming to terms with 360 degree feedback in the workplace. Reflect Back To People What You See If you are one of the recipients in a 360 review, don’t forget to balance the feedback in this 360-degree report with other feedback you’ve received and your self-assessment. If there are gaps, now is the time to think of reasons. With a better understanding of the feedback, you already avoid falling into the emotion trap. If the boss wants to ask questions about executive presence or presentation skills in the 360 degree process, that is a signal to the coachee that the boss believes that those areas are relevant and improvable. If the coachee wants to ask what he or she needs to do in order to get promoted, that informs the boss that getting a promotion is a current goal or expectation for the coaching participant. Wherever possible in the process, involve managers and leaders to convey clearly what is being asked of their teams. Encourage them to spend time with each of their employees through both formal and informal check-ins. Likewise, managers must be supported and informed in advance about how to communicate the feedback results by specifically focusing on desired behaviours on the job. Clear communication is arguably a key factor in the 360 degree process. Make sure the messaging is very clear around what the 360 process is for, how data will be used, who will see it and how the participants benefit from taking part. You need others to see what is possible, to like it and know that it could come true. If your vision feels too far away from what is realistically possible to people then bring it nearer, take a smaller step. The more specific and vivid this picture can be painted the better. Supporting the big vision encompassing 360 degree feedback system will lead to untold career development initiatives. 360 degree feedbackis a process that enables you to gather feedback about your performance from people that work with you. As the name suggests, this input comes from all directions. Usually, your manager, colleagues and those who work for you complete an online questionnaire. When employees and managers get used to using 360 degree feedbackfor the results, trying to understand them, incorporating them into their development plans, and tracking performance improvement-the ratings can then be used to evaluate and make decisions about the ratees. In organizations where there is already an environment of trust and where employees feel comfortable seeking feedback and discussing performance issues, 360-degree feedback can be used successfully for evaluation and development when it is first introduced. An objection frequently raised when administrative support is requested for 360 degree projects is that the process is too complex to administer efficiently. This objection can be overcome by piloting a 360 degree feedbackprocess to demonstrate the simplicity of each administrative activity. All 360 degree administrative activities require a relatively modest investment of time and resources. Automation can substantially reduce administrative support needs. For example, changing from paper surveys to an automated, online system enables one system administrator to support up to two thousand users. There may well be a high level of anxiety about the 360 degree feedbacksession; they may have been dreading it for ages or only since they saw their data, but the 360 Discovery Method is designed to allow you to manage and minimise the emotional load this automatically brings. Be relaxed and present yourself and work it through and it will be fine. 360 [reviews] give the employee a wide range of feedback, which tends to provide more insight than simply being reviewed by their boss, who only sees how they perform in certain settings. In addition, if an employee has a manager who is not particularly effective at giving feedback, it gives the employee being reviewed the opportunity to get constructive feedback from other sources. Making sense of what is 360 degree feedback eventually allows for personal and organisational performance development. Implementing 360 Degree Feedback Integration makes the difference with a 360 degree programme – it makes change realistic and possible. It makes the issues of upset and making the business case simply disappear. If you want to introduce 360 degree feedbackthen look at the bigger picture first and identify where it might fit. Funding for 360 degree feedbackcan be an issue. It can be delivered at no cost. This is likely to be a process involving email, spreadsheet or Word documents with manual collating of data. You can create a macro spreadsheet to gather data more cleverly. People who are chosen as raters or feedback providers in 360-degree feedback are often selected in a shared process by both the organization and the employee. These are people who generally interact routinely with the person who is receiving feedback. Uncover extra particulars regarding 360 assessment processes in this NHS web page. Related Articles: Additional Information With Regard To 360 feedback technologies Extra Information On 360 evaluation objectives Background Insight With Regard To 360 review processes Further Findings About 360 feedback technologies More Background Information With Regard To 360 degree appraisal performance dimensions Extra Insight About 360 feedback tools More Background Insight On 360 degree review applications