Remember Your Purpose
Remember why you are asking employees to go through the 360 evaluation process.
If your mission is employee development, make sure feedback is provided in a
confidential, non-threatening manner. If participants feel threatened by getting
feedback, they will be less open to receiving it.
Assuming your 360 evaluation program is focused on development,
do not provide feedback in a vacuum. Consider hiring professional and neutral
consultants who are experienced at delivering 360 feedback and coaching employees
to improve. If feedback is negative, it can be demoralizing and counterproductive.
Employees should have access to a neutral person who can help them understand
their feedback and create a plan for development. If consultants are not in
your budget or the scope of your project, make sure employees have a trusted
HR person available.
Do not provide feedback in a vacuum: Yes - we are repeating ourselves... Feedback can be very demoralizing if it is negative. Often, feedback includes indications of both strengths and weaknesses, and it is easy for a recipient to focus on the negative, even if he or she is generally doing a good job. A professional coach or HR representative can help employees identify their strengths & weaknesses and create a development plan that helps the employee become more effective.
Create a development plan: The 360 evaluation process
and feedback should lead to developmental goals. These goals should be tailored
to each participant, and they need to fit with your organization's vision,
mission, and strategy. Remember that developmental goals need
to be measurable and achievable. Ideally, a participant should focus on about
3 to 5 goals in key areas that need improvement. Be sure you have a process
in place to hold people accountable for achieving their goals.
Follow up! How are you going to know if your 360 program is working if you do not follow up? Plan to follow up with another round of feedback anywhere from 6 to 12 months after the initial feedback is collected. This is the only way you will be able to see if employees are benefiting from the feedback they received. Also, be sure to communicate to participants that they will be getting follow-up feedback. This will help create a sense of accountability. In order to ease the burden on respondents, you might want to consider an abbreviated version of the original 360 for the follow-up feedback that focuses on those competencies related to the participant's developmental goals.
Ready to Launch? Double check that you have thought through the entire
process before you start collecting feedback. Careful planning and communication
are essential to a successful 360 evaluation program. Timely
delivery of the data is also important, so do not wait until the data are in
to think about what you are going to do with them.
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