The individual feedback report you just received from your 360 feedback process is a healthy dose of leadership advice awaiting action. As I wrote in my previous article, 7 Tips for Getting the Most out of Your 360 Degree Feedback Process, the results that you achieve are directly related to the actions you take in response to your feedback. Be aware - digging into such a treasure trove of data can sometimes result in a bit of anxiety– particularly when the feedback is at odds or large discrepancies exist amongst different reviewer groups.  360 feedback has been designed to provide a complete picture of performance, multiple perspectives are sought during the 360 feedback process. With so many varying opinions, you are likely to receive some inconsistent feedback. So, how do you pull all of this divergent feedback together into something useful?

Continuous, Open Performance Feedback is Becoming the Norm

Gone are the days of the top-down, annual performance review. Organizations continue to open the performance feedback and evaluation process to invite participation from employees at all levels in the organization. This is now becoming the new normal and it offers a variety of benefits to employees and leaders. At the same time, it makes skills in providing helpful performance feedback a requirement for the entire talent pool…not just managers. Without these skills, the quality of the feedback will be limited and employees won’t get the feedback they need to develop and enhance their performance.

Peer Review Enhances Traditional Performance Appraisal

One of the many strategies that organizations are using to enhance the traditional performance appraisal process is to incorporate feedback from multiple sources. Traditional performance appraisals that simply rely on manager ratings tend to focus on outcomes or individual achievements. As a result, the collaborative work that individuals do on a daily basis made be overlooked.

"Social" has transformed our world! Are we ready to go social when it comes to employee performance management?

As our clients gear up for the year-end performance appraisal process, we are frequently asked whether other stakeholders should participate in the feedback process. As more and more managers are taking on a larger span of control they often have less of a direct opportunity to observe the performance of each and every employee throughout the year. As you can imagine, this situation can result in a less-than-meaningful performance appraisal discussion. Add to this the fact that more employees are working in a team environment and therefore have the perfect opportunity to observe the performance of their peers and provide valuable feedback on strengths and development areas.

Human Resources has jumped on the crowdsourcing bandwagon - leveraging a unique form of the social phenomenon to create better Performance Evaluations. Crowdsourcing was originally coined by Wired Magazine in 2006 Wired and typically refers to businesses involving a community of anonymous people to achieve a particular task, collaborate on a specific project, or solve a challenging issue. Leveraging a crowd for business tasks that have traditionally only involved one or two employees has the benefit of enhancing decision-making and idea generation as diversified opinions, perspectives and expertise are contributed.  

One of the key benefits of 360 degree feedback is the ability to gain perspective from a wide variety of sources.  As a result, the selection of raters for 360 degree feedback is important to ensure the acceptance of feedback and ownership over future development.