All you need to know about the 360 degree feedback

Successful companies are known chiefly for their hard work. They strive hard for the proper evaluation of their employees. Not only this, but they also make sure to guide each one of their employees properly for their improvement. But a formal performance review is essential. That is why; most of the organizations are opting for the technique which is called the 360-degree feedback. It is used for the review process, and in fact, the companies are finding it very advantageous.

Organizations, with the help of correct steps can do an excellent job of introducing as well as maximizing the value of 360 degree feedback performance appraisal. It matters a lot because nothing can raise hackles more viciously than a change in the performance of 360-degree feedback methods, that too when they may affect all the decisions concerning an employee’s compensation.

What is 360 degree?

360 degree feedback is a method that provides each and every employee the chance to receive feedback of their performance from his or her respective supervisor or head in charge, their peers, reporting staff members, co-workers, and even from their customers. Most of the 360-degree feedback tools are used by an individual for their self-assessment purpose.

360-degree feedback enables each and every employee of an organization to understand his or her own effectiveness as an employee, co-worker, or staff member is viewed by others. The most effective 360-degree feedback processes mainly provide feedback which is based on behaviors that his colleagues, and managers view as.

The feedback which is received through the system of 360-degree feedback is capable of providing an insight into the skills, potentials and behaviors that is desired in the organization to accomplish the missionvision, and goals and live the according to the values. The feedback is decisively established in behaviors that are needed to exceed the expectations of every customer.

Employers or customers who get chosen as either raters or feedback providers generally get selected in a shared process by both the organization or company and the employee. These people generally interact on a daily basis with the person or employee who is getting the feedback.

The main objective of the 360-degree feedback system is to assist each employee of the organization, helping them to understand their strengths and weaknesses and also contributing visions into aspects of their work that needs professional development.

Debates of all kinds are arising these days regarding the selection of the feedback tool and processes, choosing the raters or feedback givers, how to use utilize the feedback, reviewing the feedback, and last but not the minor, managing and integrating the process into a more extensive performance management system.

Below are some of the advantages of a 360 feedback-

  1. It helps in providing feedback to employees from a number of different sources.
  2. It helps in developing and strengthening teamwork among the workers and also their accountability.
  3. It helps in uncovering the procedural issues which are capable of hindering an employee’s growth.
  4. It also helps in revealing specific career development areas.
  5. It is capable of reducing the chances of rater bias and the tendency of discrimination.
  6. It also offers constructive feedback for improving the outputs of the employees
  7. It also helps in supplying insight on the needs of the training.

A 360-degree feedback system is known to have a lot of positive aspects, along with several proponents. A highly regarded expert in an organization should be capable of recognizing the importance of 360-degree feedback system as a vital part of leadership development programs. It is simply a way of having together a large number of leaders in a company to be comfortable with receiving feedback from direct reports, managers, customers and colleagues etc. Once the leaders begin to see the importance and values of a 360-degree feedback system, they would automatically start adding other groups to their list of raters, such as suppliers, customers etc.

It has been seen that more than 85% of the fortune that more than 500 companies are able to make today is due to adopting the method of 360-degree feedback. It is the main pathway leading to the overall leadership development process.

The companies that are satisfied having the 360-degree feedback system for improving their performance recognize the following features that manifest a well-organized 360-degree feedback process.

  1. 360-degree feedback can give a more polished report or feedback from external sources such as suppliers and customers or from internal sources such as co-workers, supervisors and managerial heads. It brings about a lot of changes and improvements among the employees. The managers alone can also save a lot of time in giving feedback since other people are also participating in the process too. The feedback received from the co-workers of an employee has a lot of importance since the employees are able to understand how the other employees are viewing their work.
  2. 360-degree feedback helps the team members to work more effectively and with enough potential. A team will know how well the team members are working than their supervisors. Appropriate feedback from external as well as internal sources makes all the members of a team more visible and accountable to each other as they are able to share knowledge. Thus, it helps to improve communication among the team members and encourages team development.
  3. This is perhaps one of the best ways of understanding any personal or organizational development that is required in an organization. The head of an organization will come to know how their employees are able to work successfully and how a company’s rules, policies, processes, and how they approach an employee can affect employee success.

Nowadays, discrimination based on race, age, gender etc., has reduces to a great extent since the feed comes from different individuals in different functions of job. The supervisors are then able to judge the each employee in an unbiased manner.

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