Which of the following is true of 360-degree feedback?

Employees like to have feedback. It helps them improve their general effectiveness in their work and directs them to how they can improve themselves to move on in their career path. There are lots of ways to collect data for feedback, but there is one way that can really lead to improved feedback loops for employees: 360 Degree Feedback.

>> Create your Online Survey with Drag’n Survey, click here

What Is 360 Degree Feedback?

People are often confused by what 360 degree feedback is. This often means that when companies utilize it, they miss out on certain aspects. For a true 360 degree feedback process, lots of people need to give feedback on the employee. These people include their peers, subordinates, supervisors, customers and the employee should also complete a self assessment.

If anyone is missed out of the process, it means the process is no longer 360 degrees. It also means that you can miss out on vital information that can help the employee receive a proper appraisal about their performance.

What Are The Best Tools For 360 Degree Feedback?

There are many tools that are appropriate for 360 Degree Feedback. However, there is nothing better for your business and the feedback loop than surveys. There are several reasons for this. These include:

They Can Be Collected Anonymously: One of the big challenges for 360 degree feedback loops is that some staff can become upset by what their peers have said about them. This is especially true if the employee doesn’t feel the feedback is appropriate or fair. However, surveys can be collected in a way that makes sure no-one knows who provided the answers.

Quicker To Deploy: Collecting feedback by getting responses from everyone individually is time consuming. You would almost need to employ a department just to process feedback. However, surveys can be sent in one click to all the relevant people. Then you can collect the responses to the questions and collate the data.

Standardized Questioning: When you collect feedback from team members, you need to make sure that the questions are all standardized. Even a slight change of the wording in a question can mean a completely different response. While this may offer you more information, it does make it harder to compare answers. A survey has a standard set of questions that mean it is only the interpretation of the respondent and not your way of asking that can affect the outcome.

It’s Easier To Compare Responses: Another great benefit of surveys is that they offer a cost-effective way to compare answers, especially if you’re using a quantitative answering system. This makes it easier for your team to analyze results and find trends in the information. For instance, do superiors see the employee as hard working but subordinates see him as lazy?

Surveys Can Be Completed When The Respondent Has Time: Another great feature of surveys within the process is that you can send them out for employees to complete in-between tasks. This is instead of interrupting them, perhaps during a business critical operation, to answer a few questions. You might have to nudge a few of them to ensure you get responses, but it’s quicker to do that and less disruptive to productivity.

How To Utilize Surveys Within Your 360 Degree Feedback Sessions

So, once you’ve sent out your surveys, collected all the responses and analyzed the data, you should get a clear indication of what people think of an employee. This is a great start, but you then need to present this information to your employee. Sometimes this is a great time, employees are well liked in their team and everyone sings their praise.

However, it doesn’t always go their way. Sometimes people highlight specific flaws in the character of peers. This is when you need to be sure that you’re presenting information in the 360 Degree Feedback sessions fairly to the employee.

The best practice is to always give one positive for every negative. No-one can be a horrendous employee, otherwise you probably would have let them go a long time ago. So peers might think that they are arrogant or unfriendly but customers always like the level of customer service they get. These should be combined in their presentation.

By marrying up positives and negatives you won’t sound like you’re complaining, but rather offering advice for proper improvement. In addition, the employee won’t put up defenses if you present them with what people like about them.

Always try to compare a positive and a negative in the same area: for instance work ethics or professionalism. This way, the employee can directly make changes by applying positive aspects from one area directly to another.

Conclusion

When you want 360 Degree Feedback, you want to ensure that you have surveys within the process. They help you to collect information quickly to help employees improve their work. This has a knock-on effect of helping your business improve and become more profitable.

More about surveys:
14 Questions To Ask For Your Customer Satisfaction Survey, click here
Find Out How You Can Address Your Employees’ Concerns, click here
The Role Of Surveys In Creating Benchmarks, click here
10 Tricks For Using Surveys In Business Projects, click here
The Science Behind The Survey, click here

Read the french version
Comment fonctionne une évaluation à 360° ? click here