360 Feedback Blog

In this article in the New York Times, Vineet Nayar, chief executive HCL Technologies, talks about how his 360 Degree Feedback results are available for everyone in the company to see, all 50,000 of them!  And 3800 managers also get 360 Degree Feedback, and that’s published on the internal web.  He believes this is critical for building transparency, trust and reverse accountability in his organisation.

In this article in Business Week, the brilliant coach Marshall Goldsmith sets out the 5 key steps that anyone can use to become a more effective leader.  The first of these is to obtain 360 Degree Feedback.

After that it’s critical to listen to the feedback, make a clear decision about what you’re going to do differently and keep getting feedback as you go.

I would add that the more visible and up front you are about the feedback you have had, and how you are actively using that feedback, the more people are going to see your commitment to your own development as a leader.

I found this great summary of questions people often ask about 360 Degree Feedback, and some of the criticisms that can be levelled against the process.

Here’s our response (we’ve repeated the comments/questions at the beginning of each paragraph):

It’s right that 360 focuses on managers and above; this is because 360 is most effective when measuring management, communication and leadership skills, and it’s at manager level that those skills become important.

There are indeed some key things that need to be in place for 360 Degree Feedback to be effective and valuable.

1) giving appraisals is a difficult task.
Yes appraisal can be difficult, but managers need to be trained in giving appraisals.  360 Degree Feedback is an additional tool to help with appraisal, because it gets feedback from multiple perspectives; it is one form of appraisal, not the only one.

2)there may be a gap between an organization’s business objectives and what 360-degree feedback programs measure.
I so agree with you - it is critical that the 360 Degree Feedback measures the behaviours that are needed for the organisation’s business objectives.  This is normally the first thing we do when designing 360 Degree Feedback.

3)time and cost associated with 360-degree feedback also are stumbling blocks
Yes, there is time and cost involved in doing any people development work.  However good communication and positioning of the 360, and careful planning, can reduce the impact of the activity. And a tool that helps employees, their managers and the organisation to understand skills gaps and strengths, is critical to the organisation’s success.

4) Reviewers and those being reviewed fail to follow up after feedback.
Follow up is essential - as with any people development tool, using it and then forgetting about it is a waste of time and money, and creates negative attitudes in the organisation.  The 360 should be integral within the people processes of the organisation, should be meaningful, and should be aligned with other activities like appraisal, training needs analysis and management and leadership development.

For a free guide on 360 Degree Feedback Best Practice, go to our website Track Surveys and download the document.

Link to my blog on UK Training Zone to read this blog.

To many employees, managers and business owners, performance and 360 appraisals are a bureaucratic and time-consuming chore.  As people professionals we often find ourselves having to argue the case for Appraisal and its benefits.   An appraisal process of some kind is essential where you have people whose performance is going to be assessed for any reason – even in the smallest company, a consistent, clear appraisal is necessary.  This is because:

1. People need a clear understanding of their role, what they are expected to do as their key tasks (i.e. their goals), and the scope of their responsibilities

2. People then need to understand clearly how their performance is going to be assessed - how their training, pay and promotion is going to be affected by their performance

3. A consistent, transparent appraisal process ensures that as far as possible, people are being assessed on a consistent basis, on the things that they have agreed to be assessed on, and have a fair chance to put their case forward in a two-way discussion with their employing organisation.

 

There is in addition a strong business case for getting a good, customised appraisal in place.  

 

1. Although time needs to be spent in running the appraisal process, this will be less than the chaos of not having any guidance in place, where managers judge their people entirely on their personal preferences and assumptions.  A fair appraisal system makes people feel that they are being treated fairly and consistently – a key indicator of employee engagement, which is critical to good employee performance

2. Having a good appraisal system in place ensures the business has an audit of the ongoing interactions with employees around performance problems, and can be an important factor in the employer’s favour if any cases are ever brought against the employer for unfair dismissal etc.

3. Appraisal need not be a long painful process: keeping your appraisal process simple, straightforward and directly linked to the company’s business objectives will ensure that people use it and that managers rate it.

 For more information on the key steps in creating a customised Appraisal for your organisation, contact us at info@tracksurveys.co.uk or on 020 7206 7279.    

Posted on Training Zone today 28 September 2009.

In this great blog, Deus Ex Macchiato tells us that we’re wasting our time appraising, feeding back or even trying to work out who does a great job in an organisation.   Here’s my response:

Loved your blog about HRbots and was intrigued that you assumed Catbert (my favourite Dilbert character) was female…I always thought Catbert was a boy…!

But moving on to your specific points:

1. Appraisals and 360 Degree Feedback: these are systems that provide some consistency over how people’s performance and activities are measured and rated .  The results of their work need to be checked from time to time, as does their capability of working with others, customers, etc. 

And without some kind of consistency (and feedback from multiple sources), how can you, indeed, overcome individual managers’ prejudices…?

A good appraisal or 360 Degree Feedback should be very clearly linked to the individual’s job performance…

2. I disagree entirely with your second point: people tend to behave and respond in fairly consistent ways over time.   I have never seen someone who sits around suddenly become a start performer - it just doesn’t happen.  They sit around because of a combination of personality, motivation and skills.  You can’t change the first two, only the last one, and only if you know what skills are required…thus measurement is important.

3. I tend to agree with your point about ’star’ performers. Have to say though, aside from the stars, a company still needs everyone else performing at their best. Not sure average is something we should be aiming for…!

And finally, if not meritocracy, then what?

Thanks for giving me something to get my thinking going on a Friday afternoon!

Jo
jo.ayoubi@tracksurveys.co.uk
www.tracksurveys.co.uk

In this interesting blog, the author asks some fundamental questions about the soundness of 360 Degree Feedback, whether people are honest when giving 360 Feedback, and how to deal with potential manipulation of the results by mutual back-scratching.

Here’s my response:

These are great questions, and ones our clients often ask us. 

As a starting point, your questions assume that 360 Degree Feedback:
- is given face to face
- consists of unstructured comments
made by colleages
- shows who has made what comments
- and that there is no guidance or control over the process.

However, key attributes of successful and properly run 360 Degree Feedback are:

- It is completed in confidence,securely and online by the person giving the feedback. The individual also self assesses and gets to compare this with feedback received
- The person receiving the feedback is scored on a set of consistent criteria - the scores are collated to give a picture of their areas of strength and weaknesses, not to show scores from individual colleagues
- Comments can also be included, but these are anonymous (although they
can be identified if they relate to a specific situtation)
- Is carefully communicated and managed, not left up to people to use (or misuse) in an unstructured way.

So in answer to your questions, and assuming that your 360 is set up and managed
correctly, as I’ve outlined:

1. Yes, the scores should be an honest reflection because they cannot be traced back to the feedback-giver.

2. The subordinate will not be the only person giving their boss feedback, and the
feedback will be grouped with that of other people, so their generosity (or lack of it)will not be identified!

3. By obtaining feedback from all levels (not just friends, but also senior colleagues, team workers and the people who report to you - hence 360 Degrees), the manipulation of the system in the way you have described cannot work. 
And if it does get past  the monitoring system, a feedbackreport that only includes friends’ feedback would be instantly recognisable as invalid and could not be used for any purpose. (In any event 360 should never be used as the sole contributor to the annual salary review).

4. As an HR manager you should be in the forefront of using feedback to improve your performance and get better at your job.  Again, if you only receive low scores from one client, and the rest are high, there may be a relatoinship issue with that client (rather
than a performance issue) which you need to address. Thus the 360 can pick up other issues that need to be dealt with.

5. Other methods include: face to face feedback on a day to day basis
(’how am I doing?’ ‘what can I do better?’), clear, goals and targets, scorecards,
team meetings…

For documents on giving great feedback, things to avoid when giving feedback, and helpingpeople through difficult feedback, go to
www.tracksurveys.co.uk and download.

We’ve just set up Ask Track - a great online site that allows you to ask and share questions about 360 Degree Feedback, Appraisal and Performance management. Our expert team will email you the answer to your question, and publish the question and answer online (without publishing your name or organisation details).  You’ll also be able to view questions that other people have asked, together with our answers.

You can even give us your answers if you think they’re better than ours!  Just go to: Ask Track and type in your question.