360 Degree Feedback: How It Works & Should You Do It?

360 degree feedback is a type of review that can be done in an organization to determine how the company is performing. If you’re looking for ways to improve yourself or your job, 360 degree feedback may be just what you need.

360 degree feedback is a process where employees are given the opportunity to provide feedback on their supervisor. It is a good idea to do this because it allows for constructive criticism and helps improve work performance. However, there are some disadvantages of 360 degree feedback that should be considered before implementing it.

360 degree feedback, also known as a 360 performance evaluation, incorporates comments from the employee’s customers, suppliers, colleagues, and/or direct reports, in addition to the employee’s supervisor. Managers obtain knowledge about an employee’s performance from numerous angles, which is an advantage.

This post will describe how to do 360 degree evaluations, when they should be done, and what tools may be used to assist you. We have received a few testimonies from customers who love and detest 360 reviews, so you can decide whether or not a 360 feedback procedure is ideal for your business.

How to Conduct 360-Degree Performance Reviews in 6 Easy Steps

Consider the employee getting the 360-degree performance assessment as standing in the middle of a circle when thinking about 360 reviews or comments. The employee’s work performance is being evaluated by everyone in the office. It contrasts with a standard top-down performance evaluation, in which only the management evaluates the employee’s performance.

Because there are more phases in a 360 feedback performance review than in a standard performance review, more preparation is required.

The following are six stages to implementing 360 reviews in your company:

Step 1: Determine who will be reviewing your work.

You must first establish who the reviewers are in a 360 performance review based on the employee’s work connections and organizational structure. To put it another way, who has knowledge of the employee’s performance? To guarantee a diverse range of viewpoints on the employee’s job, consider 8-10 reviewers with varied perspectives on the employee’s work. Consider the following people and groups of persons:

• Sam, the employee’s boss, works for Liz. Liz should work as a book reviewer. This is where a typical performance evaluation would come to an end.
• Sam works for Liz, who works for Jill, hence he is the employee’s manager’s management. If Jill is acquainted with Sam’s work, she may possibly be a reviewer.
• Employee direct reports (if they are a supervisor) — Sam has seven direct reports. They should all be listed as reviewers or at least some of them. This may provide light on Sam’s managerial abilities.
• Employees in the same department or job category as the employee — Three additional persons share Sam’s fundamental responsibilities. Because they know what the work entails, consider having them provide input on Sam’s performance.
• Employees’ cross-functional peers if they work on teams/projects – Sam worked on two projects this year, each including five employees from various departments. Consider asking a few of them to look through Sam’s work.
• Customers for whom the employee has worked — Sam is in charge of eight important clients. A selection of them may be asked to serve as reviewers.
• Vendors with whom the employee has worked — Sam has four key vendors with whom he works. They may be able to tell you more about Sam’s work style and performance.

As you can see, the first phase, locating reviewers, is likely to take some time. 360-degree evaluations are only useful if numerous individuals are reviewing each employee’s performance. A small organization may not have enough employees to complete 360-degree evaluations. It will be tough to preserve anonymity throughout a 360 feedback process if there are just 5 of you now working in your company.

You should be able to identify at least 8-10 reviewers in order to aggregate input, and you’ll need at least that many individuals in your firm to do so. If you want reviewers to remain entirely anonymous, wait until your organization has roughly 20 workers before completing 360 reviews.

Step 2: Make some review questions.

Here are some examples of open-ended questions to include in a 360-degree feedback survey:

• What evidence does the employee have that he or she is committed to the company’s values?
• What are the technical capabilities of the individual in relation to others in the same or comparable positions?
• How quick is the employee to respond to customer care requests?
• What is the effectiveness of the employee’s management style?
• On a personal level, how is the employee to work with?
• What is it about working with employees that you like the most?
• What may the employee do differently in the future year to increase performance?
• What would you recommend the employee learn more about if you had the opportunity to offer training topics?

A 360 review, unlike a typical performance evaluation, is more open-ended and anecdotal. Instead of rating job performance, work style, and goal achievement on a 3 or 5-point scale (e.g., 1 is terrible, 5 is fantastic), a good 360 review is more open-ended and anecdotal. Instead of asking reviewers to assess an employee on a scale of one to five, broaden your queries; you may only need 3-5 excellent ones.

Step 3: Educate the Examiners

This is an often-overlooked stage in the 360 review process, and it may wreak havoc on your 360 feedback as well as cause an HR nightmare (think lawsuit). To guarantee that reviewers don’t take the feedback opportunity to vent their frustrations or make improper (or even illegal/protected class-type) remarks, you’ll need to provide guidelines and training. Review our articles on Federal Labor Laws, Anti-discrimination Laws, and Hiring Laws for additional information.

For example, an untrained reviewer who is dissatisfied with Sam’s work might respond, “Sam is a young jerk who doesn’t know the first thing about management,” rather than something more actionable, such as, “Sam, as a newcomer to the workforce, could benefit from listening more to his employees’ questions before asserting his opinion, and by seeking advice from some of the more seasoned management staff before finalizing his recommendations.” The first example was snide, unhelpful, and even unlawful since it alluded to Sam’s young (i.e. age discrimination).

On the plus side, some HR software with performance review systems, such as Namely, offers training, while others, such as Success Factors, enable you to do a legal check on the phrasing of replies before enabling reviewers to make their comments online. Otherwise, it is your responsibility as the manager to ensure that the reviewers’ comments are focused on business-related improvements rather than personal assaults or discriminatory statements and that they are kept secret.

Step 4: Conduct a survey or conduct a performance review

To protect the integrity of your 360 degree feedback process, it’s critical to keep reviewers’ identities hidden.

As a result, we suggest utilizing a free survey service such as SurveyMonkey or SurveyGizmo that can keep your information private. Better yet, invest in web-based software created expressly for 360-degree feedback surveys.

Many of the HR and performance management software providers we suggest, such as BizMerlin and Small Improvements, include particular tools that enable you to do a 360-degree evaluation.

In addition, we looked for good technologies for small businesses that focused only on 360-degree feedback. Although we haven’t given these packages a thorough assessment and can’t suggest one over the other, they all have high user ratings and include the features that a small company requires:

• You’ll find a library of questions to get you started, as well as the option to modify or compose your own.
• Individual and group reports, as well as aggregate data, are available to assist you in providing comments.
• Rater selection & tracking, also allowing feedback from those outside your company
• To assist you and your reviewers in getting started, we provide training, webinars, and online documentation.
• With the exception of one vendor, all of them provide a self-service site for you, your team, and reviewers to utilize.

Step 5. Aggregate the Data & Check For Trends

You’ll want to prepare ahead with whatever technology you’re using to be able to aggregate or summarize the data in a manner that preserves the reviewers’ identities (so the person being evaluated doesn’t retaliate, causing an HR issue). You could do this in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, but many online 360 performance evaluation and survey systems already handle it for you.

You’ll see actionable patterns as you study and summarize the data. For example, if six out of ten reviews say Sam tends to blame others, you may want to train him on accepting responsibility for his errors.

Step 6: Hand out the 360-degree feedback in person.

The management, the manager’s manager, HR, or a combination of them should communicate the consolidated feedback replies directly to the individual being evaluated. If the employee is not onsite, provide feedback in person or over Skype/video conference. Your data will give actionable feedback for Sam to build his career and improve his performance if your reviewers were properly educated.

You boost your workers’ self-esteem and collaborative abilities, be sure to provide both positive and negative comments. For example, if the majority of the reviewers praise Sam’s responsiveness, provide that information with the other remarks. Employees are typically ‘blind’ to what they perform best, according to Lominger’s study. Hearing it from their peers may increase their morale and provide positive reinforcement for a job well done. All comments, of course, should be given with the goal of improving your employee’s abilities, confidence, and motivation.

Many HRIS systems provide a built-in performance evaluation feature, however, Zoho People is the best option for 360-degree reviews. This tool not only makes it simple for you and your workers to check their performance reports, but it also allows you to build improvement plans and offer constructive remarks to help drive each person.

When Should You Conduct a 360-Degree Performance Evaluation?

The following are three timelines to consider while doing 360 reviews:

1. Once a year, or on the anniversary date of the person
2. When a project comes to a close,
3. Whenever you need to give developmental coaching or succession planning, contact us.

Many companies do their 360 feedback annually. Others only do 360 feedback When a project comes to a close, or when they want to give feedback to support an employee’s development, such as part of a management/leadership development program. Some do standard reviews annually, with the more in-depth 360 reviews only every few years.

In between more structured assessments, the greatest firms give continual informal input. Finally, you must choose the appropriate time for your company, but we suggest providing frequent informal feedback so that nothing surprises the employee.

HR specialists and business owners believe that 360-degree reviews are beneficial.

1. Strategic Communications, LLC, Linda Pophal, CEO

360 degree input from an employee’s team members, coworkers, colleagues and customers provided me with a broader range of inputs to form opinions on the employee’s effectiveness in meeting goals and supporting the organization’s mission, vision, and values. Making judgments based only on my own observations, impressions or opinions, runs the risk that I might miss an important opportunity for providing positive, or constructive, feedback and also runs the risk that my feedback could be clouded by my own unconscious biases.

2. FMG Leading Consultant Lisa Philyaw

360 feedback offers the opportunity for the receiver to gain self-awareness around strengths, development opportunities, and gaps in perception, and this type of feedback can be difficult to come by through other modes. Oftentimes, we find our clients are unaware of how they are coming across to others; the 360 results provide them not only the insight to realize it, but also an understanding of how it impacts those with whom they work – a crucial first step in creating motivation for growth and change.

3. HoneyBook’s Community Manager, Natalie Frank

We do 360 performance reviews twice a year because it creates a culture of feedback built on the foundation of trust and honesty. It eliminates fear, ambiguity, and uncertainty in the workplace. When employees are empowered to give and receive feedback openly, they take more ownership of their roles and see that their words make an impact.

360-Degree Performance Evaluations Aren’t for Everyone

Indeed, according to a recent Harvard Business Review article, up to one-third of US organizations are abandoning formal assessments in favor of more regular, informal input. Here are some viewpoints:

1. A-Plus Benefits’ Director of Employee Experience, Amber Hunter

I hate 360 feedback because, in my experience, peers often stockpile the negative feedback and utilize the 360 processes to dump feedback anonymously on the receiver rather than addressing concerns at the moment. Much of the feedback seems to be personal rather than constructive. I’ve been on the receiving and giving ends of 360 feedback and I think organizations that foster open, honest cultures of dialogue don’t need to use 360 feedback as a development tool. Teaching your team members to speak up when they have a concern with, or praise one another will build a stronger culture in the long run.

2. Mike Catania, PromotionCode’s Chief Technology Officer

As a manager of 8 employees, I hate 360 Reviews because it asks untrained people to do subjective evaluations of people who may or may not be doing subjective evaluations of them later. There are reasons that managers receive formal training on how to evaluate employees and don’t leave it to Yelp-style opinions from co-workers.

3. Director of Washington Frank International, Guv Jassal

I hate 360 feedback because personal bias can get in the way. I think a better method is to build feedback and coaching into your daily interactions and make it a part of the company culture.

Conclusion

Although the tiniest of small companies may have no need for 360 feedback, most firms may benefit from assisting their workers in recognizing and embracing their strengths as well as bridging any skill gaps in order to enhance overall company performance. 360 feedback is worth a go if you want a well-rounded, balanced perspective of your personnel. However, as several of our readers pointed out unless your reviewers are properly trained, 360 feedback might backfire, lowering staff morale and confidence.

So, if you’re going to do it, do it well by educating the reviewers, utilizing a 360 feedback software tool to produce the reports, and sitting down in person to offer the feedback review.