How to Provide Good 360-Degree Feedback
Evaluating employees can be a process fraught with difficulties. Feedback coming directly from a manager or a colleague lacks legitimacy, especially if it is negative. All too often, an employee presented with negative feedback from a single source can turn that feedback into a personal issue and disregard it entirely. That's where 360-degree feedback comes in. A 360-degree feedback session uses an anonymous group of employees to evaluate a colleague's performance. The process helps deliver negative and positive feedback in a more constructive fashion; employees take criticism less personally when it is delivered anonymously and constructively. An organization that uses 360-degree feedback in the right manner can see employees improve their productivity and contribute more in the workplace. But to do so, a manager putting together a 360-degree feedback session needs to institute good feedback practices.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
-
1
Involve as many people in your organization as possible. A key factor of 360-degree feedback is creating a fair evaluation environment. Employees receiving positive and negative feedback must believe that it comes from legitimate sources. Involving only a few employees will reduce the impact of legitimate feedback.
-
2
Create goals before instituting 360-degree feedback. This feedback exercise requires concrete goals in order to be effective. Draft development goals that are relevant to your organization. Is the goal of the feedback to increase productivity? To improve sales? To create a metric for downsizing? Know the answers to these questions before you begin.
-
-
3
Hold employees accountable to the goals you set. Half the battle of 360-feedback is creating results. Frequently evaluate whether employees are on track to meet the goals addressed during feedback sessions. Evaluate whether employees are taking this feedback into account throughout the coming months.
-
4
Emphasize to employees giving feedback that they must be polite and constructive. Pursue these goals in your own feedback. Feedback is useful only if it is delivered in a constructive manner. Remind employees that just because they are anonymous does not mean they can be mean. Negative feedback can be just as useful as positive feedback if delivered in the right manner.
-
5
Follow up with employees after the feedback, preferably in the company of an HR professional. No one likes receiving negative feedback. That can be especially destructive if an employee who does a great job begins to focus on only the negative feedback received during the session. Run individual sessions with yourself, the employee and an HR team member to put the feedback results into context.
-
1
