Interested in conducting 360 reviews but not sure where to begin? The 360 review is a great tool for gaining feedback about employee performance. We’re going to share valuable input about putting these reviews into practice, so you can more effectively guide your employees to success. Everyone from entry-level employees to senior leaders will benefit.
Read on to learn about the 360 feedback and review process and how to get it right.
Navigation
1. What Is 360-Degree Feedback?
2. Top Tips for Doing a Successful 360 Review
3. Bonus! A few best practices for the best possible 360 performance review
4. Make 360 Reviews an Ongoing Part of Performance Improvement with Primalogik
What Is 360-Degree Feedback?
A 360 review, also called 360 degree feedback or simply 360 feedback, collects detailed feedback on an employee’s performance. The purpose is to help employees (and other members of company leadership) learn where they need to improve. To do this, it surveys a broad range of people, such as:
- Peers on their team
- Leaders
- Direct reports
- Clients
- Colleagues in other departments
Each of these people has a valuable perspective to share. (Peer feedback can boost performance by 14%, Gartner has found.) And no one—including the employee’s supervisor—has the whole picture. The 360 review synthesizes this range of perspectives to gain rich insights.
Once the information has been gathered and analysed, employees then benefit from a well-rounded understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. Again, the purpose is to help them grow professionally. The review should have no bearing on promotional and salary-related decisions. That would be a sure way to breed resentment between employees!
It’s also important to remember that reviewers have the option to remain anonymous. This encourages people to voice feedback candidly.
Top Tips for Doing a Successful 360 Review
360 reviews have the potential to help employees make real progress on their professional journey. However, as with many tools, it is important to learn how to use these assessments properly to get the most out of the exercise.
If you’re looking for a template, we invite you to take a look at a related article: 360 Reviews : The Ultimate Guide (Template).
And now, our top tips for building and executing a successful 360 review process!
1. Prepare for Success
Preparation is arguably the most important phase of a successful 360° survey implementation! Preparation doesn’t only refer to creating the survey – in fact, this stage comes before you even get to work on building and performing the actual reviews.
Choose your timing
First, make sure the timing is right. Organizations with high degrees of trust among colleagues and management are good candidates for 360 feedback. If your company is undergoing a major restructure or if a blame culture currently exists, implementing a 360 process could have adverse effects. Make sure it is a good time to collect data!
Also, consider how often you should do reviews. For best results, conduct 360 reviews periodically so you can observe progress. Many companies gather 360 feedback every 3 to 6 months. This also gives employees the satisfaction of seeing how they improve.
Communicate your goals
Second, define and communicate the process goals right off the bat. Hit the whiteboard at the start to make sure there is a clear idea of how the 360-degree feedback process fits within the overall employee development efforts. How often are you going to ask for feedback? What are you going to do with the results?
Get everyone on board
Third, ensure buy-in throughout the organization. Communication from the get-go is key. You need to sell that this survey isn’t just a formality, aka a waste of time. Show that all levels of management are invested in the process. Make sure everybody knows why the 360 feedback process is being implemented and what the feedback will be used for. Establish that post-survey, resources will be invested to enact needed change.
Employees will only provide honest feedback if they believe it will be used for the right reasons and if it is confidential. If you do ensure anonymity, it’s extremely important to properly communicate the value of the 360-degree feedback process works, how the feedback will be used and how the anonymity of respondents is guaranteed. Employees will not feel comfortable providing honest feedback if they do not trust the system.
2. Build Your 360 review carefully
When creating a 360 review, there is no need to reinvent the wheel.
Use a professional employee performance management system
Find the right employee performance management solution for your organization, and you will discover built-in 360 review surveys you can use as a basis for your own personalized review. Look for a product that provides 360 feedback surveys, performance appraisals, AND employee surveys, like Primalogik’s complete employee performance management system. Keep in mind, there is no need to break the bank when integrating a simple, flexible, and affordable solution.
Keep your reviews short
Keep it short and simple: The Harvard Business Review recommends creating shorter surveys to improve response rates and data quality. Also, make sure your survey follows a logical order and that it takes a reasonable amount of time to complete. Otherwise users will checkout/be lost by the end.
Formulate your questions carefully
Every question in the survey should be well thought out. Questions should not repeat. Start by planning what insights you need and then work backward. Then pare down where possible.
Also, when ensuring every question is necessary, really make sure you are asking the right questions that get to the core of possible organizational issues. Strive for clear and precise language that will make your questions easy to answer, and make sure you only ask one question at a time. If your questions contain the word “and”—it can be a red flag that your question has two parts. For example “Which of these services has the best customer support and reliability?” Customer support can be rated differently than reliability. Combining these two in one question could make the data on customer support and reliability misleading.
Avoid bias and unnecessary complication
Designing good 360 feedback questions is a really important element of the process, and it includes avoiding leading and biased questions. Make sure you aren’t pointing a reviewee towards a certain answer.
Evaluate the adjectives and adverbs in your questions. It is quite possible they are unnecessary. For example: Should concerned pet owners RFID chip their dogs? By using the word concerned, you put pet owners not tracking their dogs on the defensive, thus creating bias. A more successful non-leading question would be: Do you think dogs should be chipped?
Choose your language carefully
Speak the respondent’s language. Use language and terminology that your respondents will understand and try to avoid technical jargon.
Use rating scales whenever possible
It’s also important to use good rating scales. Scales that display the direction and intensity of attitudes often provide useful data. On the other hand, binary response options such as true/false response options, generally produce less informative data.
Most yes/no or true/false questions can be reworked by including phrases such as “How much,” “How often,” or “How likely.” When setting up the scale remember that an unbalanced response scale can mislead a respondent in the same way a poorly worded question might. Make sure your response scales have a definitive midpoint. Aim for odd numbers of possible responses. Also, ensure they cover the whole range of possible reactions.
It’s also important to include “not applicable” (N/A) response options. A N/A response is ok. A fake answer is not. Providing N/A response options prevents respondents from skipping questions or giving false answers.
3. Test your 360 reviews before putting in them into place
It’s always a good idea to do a trail run of your 360 reviews. Act out the process with a select group of employees first, and see how it goes before involving everyone. This way you can address any concerns from participants, get comfortable with the tools and have the flexibility to prepare action plans based on the feedback and comments.
4. Put your 360 reviews to work
After all that prep, it’s time to perform the reviews. Choose appropriate respondents for best results. For a 360-degree feedback survey you should involve a wide range people throughout the company who are truly familiar with the employee under review. Primalogik 360 allows people being reviewed to suggest their own participants, providing valuable input at this stage of the process.
Don’t waste all that work – make sure people take the review! Communicate effectively throughout the process and track progress with survey email. Automated invitations and reminders can also help you organize and administer your surveys.
5. Analysis: now the real work begins
There are three main steps you should never skip when analysing the feedback from your 360 reviews:
Step One: Dig into the data. Spend time processing the results. Don’t just send the raw results to employees without any analysis. Make sure you aren’t just looking at averages, as valuable insight often lies in the outliers. Use frequency distribution charts to gain better insight on how 360 feedback ratings are distributed across a group of respondents. Looking at the full range allows managers and HR personnel to identify areas of disagreement, performance gaps or opportunities for improvement.
Step Two: Use the data and follow-up with each employee. Effective leaders pay close attention to a 360 survey and use it to effect necessary change. Employees need to know that their responses are heard and that leaders are willing to make necessary changes. After analyzing all the raw data, make sure to produce an action plan for each one of your employees. And it doesn’t stop there. Follow-up with each respondent at predetermined intervals to make sure they are making progress within their customized plan.
Step Three: Rinse and repeat. The 360-degree process is not a one-time thing. Repeat the process and compare results to verify whether the right behaviors are being reinforced, progress is being made, and that your people are developing the right competencies. The process can be polished, questionnaires can be perfected, questions can be refined. Just make sure you convey the value of each iteration and each respondent’s time. Or else the surveys may just get deleted or forgotten.
Bonus! A few best practices for the best possible 360 performance review
Yes, there are pros and cons of 360 degree feedback. But putting the process into place carefully can help you avoid most of the pitfalls, and enjoy most of the advantages.
Invest in a Quality Tool
Choosing a good 360 feedback tool will ensure you get the best results. Professional 360 degree feedback & review software helps you follow a standardized process to gain accurate, bias-free info. It generates questions that solicit detailed input. And it presents results in an easy-to-understand format. For instance, it might share graphs illustrating progress in certain areas. It can even point out patterns of bias.
Start at the Top
Begin at the top, says David Epstein, U.S. HR director for Doctors Without Borders. Conduct 360 reviews with organizational leaders first. This will increase buy-in among all employees. It also helps leaders understand the process and the value of the data.
“Leaders should understand the process, and ideally, go through it themselves so that they can relay a positive experience to other employees,” Epstein explains further in Forbes. “In my organization, we started a 360-degree feedback program with the chair of the board, then piloted the program for the senior management team.”
Define What You’re Measuring
Define the core competencies needed to succeed. Those are the skills you’ll measure in your 360 review. They’ll vary depending on job rank and position. For example, coaching ability is crucial in a leader.
Focus on Behaviours
Prompt reviewers to give specific feedback. They should focus on behaviours that they’ve observed. Use “behavioural language” in your questions. For example, don’t ask, “Do clients appreciate the employee’s work?” Ask questions like, “Does the employee follow up with clients about their satisfaction?”
This leads to more objective answers. In contrast, questions that don’t focus on behaviours are open to interpretation. This makes answers more subjective—and less useful in a 360 review.
Choose Reviewers Carefully
Be careful not to select only people who have a close relationship with the employee. To avoid this, the employee might be able to work with HR to choose reviewers. (HR can ascertain whether the employee’s suggestions are appropriate.) According to the Harvard Business Review, getting at least 12 reviews is ideal, depending on organizational size.
Employees can also complete a self-evaluation as part of the process. This lends additional insight to their level of self-awareness.
Provide Clear Guidelines
All reviewers need to follow the same guidelines for answering the questions. For questions that use a rating scale (e.g., 1–5 or 1–10), they must know how the scale works. Clearly outline the criteria for each number and explain it to them.
Discuss the Results
Discuss the findings with the employee. Don’t just email a report and consider the process complete. Employees need help interpreting the findings. More importantly, they need to figure out where to go from there. Help them understand how to develop the areas in question.
HR can share the results directly with the employee. This emphasizes that the results aren’t coming just from the supervisor. Also, it puts control of the process in the employee’s hands. The employee should then reach out to the supervisor to create a plan.
Follow Up
Provide follow-up support. Employees may need tools, training, or mentorship to grow. Continue to evaluate whether they have the appropriate learning resources. And talk with them regularly over the coming months about their progress.
HR should handle many of these steps. It must decide on a cohesive process for the whole organization to follow. HR should also give supervisors guidance on how to discuss the results and follow up.
Make 360 Reviews an Ongoing Part of Performance Improvement with Primalogik
Following the best practices outlined here will allow you to develop invaluable insights. Your employees will flourish as they receive accurate input about their performance. Providing ongoing guidance will ensure they make good use of it.
When done correctly and coupled with a robust employee performance management plan, 360-degree surveys can transform organizations. They can also drastically improve employee satisfaction. That’s why Primalogik has developed a top 360 degree feedback & review software used by companies across North America. This tool allows reviews to be set up in advance and scheduled for a later date. It provides graphs and averages, and comparative ratings to identify blind spots and hidden strengths. It can be anonymous – or not – according to your needs and preferences. It can even be used to compare results against other reviewees or a benchmark combined rating, or against results from a previous year.
Ready to launch 360 reviews with your workforce? Book a demo of our 360 review software to see firsthand how it works!