360 Degree Feedback

System

I'm interested in feedback regarding 360 Degree Performance Reviews: Employees Rating Supervisors; Peers Rating Peers. What has been your experience? Good idea, bad idea? Is it anonymous? Tied to Manager's performance review or used strictly for feedback/development purposes? Other helpful info? I have lots of questions, but not many answers for a management staff that will probably be reluctant to head in this direction. Anything you can share would be very much appreciated.

Carla Fountain
[email]fountain.carla@ocls.info[/email]

WOCO Frank

My experience here is pretty brief, but I'll tell you what I learned.

1. If the feedback is a charade (ie, management really doesn't care what employees think of their supervisors), or it's aimed at one particular manager that you'd like to get rid of, then the 360 process does more harm than good.

2. No matter how confidential you intend it to be, employees will get their feelings hurt. Someone will "confide" in someone else what they said about an employee. Someone will think they know who made a certain comment and confront them. Someone will accuse management of fabricating feedback.

3. Employees will be upset because they perceive that you don't act on their feedback. If 14 employees have great things to say about their boss, and 2 think he's terrible, the 2 will be mad if you don't publicly humiliate their boss, flog him, have him tarred and feathered, and sit him in a corner with a dunce cap on, based on all the great information their shared with you at your request.

4. Think how hard it is to get "professional" managers to rate people on job performance, not personalities. Now you want everyone else to be able to do it too?

5. No process violates the KISS principle like 360-degree evaluations.

All that having been said, I have no doubt there are organizations who are having success with 360-degree evaluations. I just don't know how they pulled it off.

Margaret Morford

The organizations that do it well, use it as a coaching tool and not as a piece of the performance review. This way the process really is to help an individual grow and develop and carries no penalty such as becoming part of the employee's permanent employment record or effecting his/her increase. It really works well if an outside firm does it and the feedback is only provided to the person being rated and not to anyone else like their manager. The outside firm should be able to indentify things that each person can do to change his/her behavior in order to help the individual grow and develop.

Margaret Morford
theHRedge
615-371-8200
[email]mmorford@mleesmith.com[/email]
[url]http://www.thehredge.net[/url]