A Perfect Synthesis

Despite careful planning, organizations often run into certain problems when attempting to do company wide 360 Degree Feedback projects. Typically, these problems involve excess time consumption, low participation rates, as well as complaints from participants about, among other things, the validity, purpose, confidentiality or value of the project. While most of these problems can be addressed in well organized "kick off" meetings, email communications, instructional documents and the like, some (but certainly not all) organizations come to feel as though the ultimate payoff is not worth the headache of trying to get several hundred participants "on board".

In response, HR-Meter has devised a solution for organizations who want the company wide benefits associated with 360 Degree Feedback yet wish to avoid or minimize the time, monetary consumption as well as the headache associated with such a task.

Department Focus 360 is the perfect synthesis of organizational employee satisfaction surveying and individual focus 360 Degree Feedback. Department Focus 360 is based on the same concepts that make multi-rater feedback of individuals so effective. In Department Focus 360 an entire department is treated as a single entity or individual. The department is assessed by it's constituent employees (much like a self review), its department heads (much like a manager's review) as well as other departments within the organization (much like a peer review).

The result is much like you would expect from a standard 360 Degree Feedback. A report is generated that details the strengths and areas for improvement of the department as a whole. Department heads disseminate the data to managers and supervisors who, in turn, express to employees what changes they would like to see on the basis of the results. At the same time, employees are given an opportunity for meaningful engagement. Our research has shown that organizations are significantly more likely to have a high acceptance of changes to day-to-day operations (such as those being handed down in response to the results of Department Focus 360) if those changes are the result of feedback coming directly from employees.

Once the initial data is in, repeated assessment of departments can be used to track improvement and highlight stubborn issues that may need a more local remedy (such as training or coaching).

You can learn more about Department Focus 360 by visiting HR-Meter.com

HR-Meter 360 Feedback and Career Coaching Giveaway!

HR-Meter is giving away a Free 360 Degree Feedback assessment and an assessment review with a certified career coach!

You will be able to have up to 2 managers, 3 peers (coworkers), 3 subordinates (direct reports) and 3 clients review you in the following areas:

• Work Patterns and Productivity
• Responsibility and Initiative
• Communication and Team Work
• Leadership and Management Skills
• There will be comment fields available for each of these areas.

What you will get:

• A HR-Meter 360 Degree Feedback Assessment Report!
• Discussion of this report with a certified career coach!
• Show initiative at work
• Impress your boss,
• Anonymous, constructive feedback on your performance from your coworkers
• Develop a plan for your professional development.
• A push for your career!

But only the first 50 who register will get in!

Register Here

Feedback Culture?

Before engaging in a feedback process like 360 degree feedback, it is important to know whether your organization is ready to engage in this kind of activity. Do you have a feedback culture? Are you prepared to foster one?

Maybe you've been looking and asking around. Maybe you've heard your competitors use feedback tools to improve performance and development. Yet, if you're thinking of engaging in a feedback process like 360 degree feedback just because your competitors use it, think twice. Organizations may choose to do a 360 degree feedback just because their competitors do. Or maybe to give the impression of openness and participation to employees, clients or recruits when, in fact, this is not a part of the organization's culture. Regardless, this amounts to using a tool or procedure for political purposes and is ultimately counter-productive.

If, on the other hand, your organization has a growing commitment to openness and feedback, then perhaps it's time. Just be sure you're going in for the right reasons.

What about after Performance Evaluation?

Our colleagues over at HR-Meter are constantly asked questions like "but what are we supposed to do with the results?" and "where do we go from here?". These questions, of course, refer to performance evaluations, 360 degree feedback's and the like. These forms of feedback give employees a tremendous amount of information about how they have "performed" in the past, but organizations often find it difficult to translate that information into concrete road maps for future performance. It's certainly a tricky task and, unfortunately, it's often one that cannot be undertaken so "late in the game". What does that mean?

By "late in the game", I mean something like "after the results are in" or "once the reviews are complete". If you've made it to the "late in the game" stage and then you're asking "where do we go from here?", it's to late.

The road map for future performance must be defined before the reviews even get started. We encourage organizations to create performance evaluation processes with future performance in mind. Measure things that can be developed, improved or avoided. It sounds simple, but it requires thought and foresight. For example, when your employee has his or her review, the take aways should always be a list of strengths and a list of areas for development. Future reviews need to focus on measuring the level of improvement in those areas for development as well as checks to ensure that strengths have not be sacrificed in the process.

The real bottom line is: a performance review is not just something we do once a year because that's how it is. Unfortunately, many people I talk to describe performance reviews as just that.

Fear at 360 Degrees…

To unlock the power of the 360 degree feedback process a manager must either be well prepared to navigate through gap analysis and a host of comparative data or should be flanked by a coach throughout the debriefing period.

It is easy for a manager who feels untrained when it comes to giving feedback to fall into some of the common traps that have given the 360 degree feedback a bad reputation in the past.  Feedback that mentions “who said what” or focuses solely on the weaknesses of an employee without being careful to offer a balanced feedback may do more harm than good and be easily overwhelmed by the quantitative measurements. If the desired result of a 360 degree feedback process is to improve the behavior of employees or leaders, then it is vital that the feedback be as accurate, balanced and relevant as possible.

While all this sounds like common sense, are you able to distill the meaning of the results of a 360 degree feedback in a professional and constructive manner? Or do you find it to be a personal affair?

Questions to ponder:

• Have you ever struggled with giving a balanced feedback?
• Do you have an anecdotal vignette to share?

Suggestions:

• Partnering with coaches can provide long term benefits in the professional development of your employees, leaders and ultimately your organization.
• Using 360 Degree Feedback tools that have been custom build for your organization can make all the difference.

Results: 360 Degree Feedback Systems

Year after year, companies treat their 360 Degree Feedback process as a routine. They claim they are happy with it. We have never encountered a 360 Degree Feedback program that is perfect. There is always significant room for improvement.

I want to thank all of you who participated in our survey to study the perceived effectiveness of 360 Degree Feedback projects within companies. This has been just one of many studies conducted by HR-Meter and HR-Worldview into the effectiveness of 360 Degree Feedback.

Here are the main results:

• 45% of individuals surveyed believe that their current tool is not time efficient.
  
• 38% of individuals surveyed say that their current report types are not easy to read.
  
• 46% of individuals surveyed said that their tool did not ask the relevant questions.
  
• 68% of individuals surveyed said that their tool would profit from more customization to their job.
  

For the full report, Click the Report Button below

or just click here

Survey: 360 Degree Feedback Systems

Have you participated in a 360 Degree Feedback Project in the last year?

We are gathering information about the perceived effectiveness of various 360 Degree Feedback Systems.

Please take a moment to think back on the last 360 Degree Feedback project you participated in and answer the following questions as if they were about your specific project.

Click the Start Button to take this survey

or just click here

We will make the results of this survey available to those who request them

Field Research: 360 Degree Feedback

We recently wanted to do a little "field research". We asked some serious HR executives and consultants the following question:

"Have you experienced a case where you found that a 360 Degree Feedback and a follow up coaching simply didn't provide the longer-term performance tracking that you were looking for?" 

The question was ambiguous and broad enough that we weren't surprised at all to receive a wide variety of responses. Nevertheless, there is a common theme!

* * *

So, let's have a look at what some folks had to say.

"In my opinion these feedback systems work when they are not only used as appraisal systems, but as developmental systems as well. Effective 360 feedback systems seem to work better when a manager is engaged in implementing these systems and when the employee is given timely feedback that they can use in goal setting and improving their performance. These systems should be used to reinforce organizational values set forth by the company."

- Anonymous HR

"While 360 Degree Feedback is widely accepted as a critical tool for key HR interventions, many a times it falls short of delivering on the objectives it was destined to achieve. One of the key reasons for this is the credibility of the feedback as perceived by the feedback receiver. Many a times feedback providers are either chosen by the feedback receiver or become known to the feedback receiver through informal communication channels that exist in every organization. Once the curtain over the feedback providers is raised, a smart feedback receiver knows what tone of feedback to expect. In such cases, not only does the feedback receiver become a little indifferent to feedback, but also contributes to the lack of impact of the intervention on his/ her performance tracking/ other program objectives."

- Lakshmi DVS, PHR, SPHR

"I have had experiences where 360s or other similar processes raised the client's awareness, which is itself of real value. I can think of several instances where the clients were just not ready to take the next steps (declare that they wanted to make a specific change and develop practices to develop new habits), and I found myself taking on more responsibility for their change than they did. Good lessons learned for me as coach (particularly when I was in an internal consulting HR role). In hindsight, I recognize many alternate paths I might have taken to better serve my coachee."

- Anonymous HR

"In my experience this can happen if the Manager is not clear in his/her expectations of the employee. You can have great 360 feedback and coaching with mixed signals from the manager. When this happens this sets the employee up for failure. The saying that you "join a company and leave a manager" is very true. In this economic environment I am seeing even less leadership at the management level which unfortunately makes it very difficult for the employees working with that manager to succeed."

- Alanea Kowalski

"Even most of the managers find the 360 Degree Feedback a task and not a development process. But who told us that any manager can act as a coach? Who can say if the manager has the right skills to coach, train, lead and support? This is the question I guess we, HR, should ask ourselves and should never take it as granted. Actually I'm more and more convinced about individual employee initiative for development rather than a company's one, or support coming from his manager!"

- Anonymous HR

* * *

OK, so the big question to ask is, what's the common theme here? Is there one? I think that there is, but I won't spill the beans because I want to hear from you! 

Hint: It has something to do with "after" or "the next step".

How do you conduct 360 Feedback Follow-up? (Part 2 of 2)

As we pointed out earlier, a 360 Degree Feedback project that lacks a consistent and structured follow-up is going to lack any real and meaningful value not only for the employees who participate in it but for the company as a whole. In short, failure to properly follow-up on a 360 Degree Feedback project results in lost opportunity and wasted money.

So, as promised, we're going to point out a few steps that absolutely must be taken as a follow through or follow-up to a 360 Degree Feedback project.

Step 1) Every focus person must sit down with his or her manager to discuss the outcome of the project. During this discussion, the focus person and his or her manager need to come to agreement on a number of areas that that need to be improved upon. These areas should be easily identifiable if the 360 report is any good.

Step 2) The focus person and his or her manager must work out a "to-do-list". This should be a list of things the focus person can start to concentrate on on a daily basis that will result in improvement in those broader areas worked out in Step 1. This is the step that is almost always ignored which results in negligible improvement for the focus person.

Step 3) The employer need to work out a system to help each focus person track his or her completion of the "to-do-list". If you are a manager, this could mean routinely e-mailing the focus person to let them know that you have noticed that the focus person has been doing a great job on some items of their to-do-list and a poor job on others. Or, the employer could use a tool like HR-Meter's advanced "performance tracker system" which allows a focus person's rater group to continue to comment on his or her progress between 360 Degree Feedback projects. Step 3 keeps each focus person engaged and on top of their own improvement between 360's. This allows you to spread out the time between 360 Degree Feedback projects, save money and improve efficiency.

Step 4) Knowing that between 360 Degree Feedback projects steps have been taken to capitalize on the information gathered in the previous project, each subsequent 360 Degree Feedback project should be adapted to reflect each stage in the company's performance evolution. You should not be doing identical 360's time and time again.

If you implement these 4 simple steps after your next 360 Degree Feedback project, you will have added considerable value and meaning to your project and will have saved yourself and your company time and money.

How do you conduct 360 Feedback Follow-up? (Part 1 of 2)

A big question that companies need to ask themselves after "completing" a 360 Degree Feedback project is "what should we do with the results?". Far too often what ends up happening is that each employee gets a copy of a virtually illegible 30 or 40 page report and is told to look it over. Of course, that report finds itself in the waste bin while its clone is filed away to be compared with the report generated by the next 360.

A process like this leaves employees feeling like the 360 Degree Feedback project was A) just a formality and B) a waste of time. Either no emphasis is put on improvement or (if on the off chance that desire for improvement IS communicated at all) no methods, approaches, goals, etc are laid down upon which the employee is to improve. 

"It's just something that we do once a year."

This is a waste of time and a waste of money and if this is the way your company is conducting 360 Degree feedback or multi-rater feedback projects, you might as well stop doing them all together.

Does the above sound familiar to you?

Event Invitation - 360 Degree Feedback

On February 20th, we will be hosting a live web-event where you will learn how to cut your annual performance review, 360 Degree Feedback and coaching costs by more than 50%. Christina Dietzsch-Kley, President and CEO of HR-Meter LLC will take you through the "do's and don'ts" of modern employee evaluations and unveil an exciting new, real-time, alternative to the norm.

This should be a highly informative webinar for anyone who has been considering implementing some kind of multi-rater feedback project as well as those who currently use 360 Degree Feedback projects on a regular basis.

360 Degree Feedback Month

For the month of February, we will be running a series of articles on the topic of 360 Degree Feedback. We're kicking the series off today with the introduction to a Research Study that we recently conducted into the soundness and reliability of 360 Degree Feedback projects.

It only seems natural to start at the beginning: To define what a 360 Degree Feedback process is.

Best practice in 360 degree feedback

Results and experiences from practice

“The concept of 360 Feedback makes a lot of sense and, if used well, should have a great deal to offer. It seems to suit the move towards the less hierarchical, more flexibly structured an knowledge based organizations of the future” – Dr. Clive Fletcher 

Companies are shaped by the goals they have, the people they work with and the contemporary texture in which they are embedded. Several decades ago, organizations were modeled upon hierarchical frameworks which, inevitably, rendered a very clear and precise organizational model. With the wave of lean management came the toppling of organizational hierarchies and the installation of more interlaced, dynamic organizational settings focused upon cross functional and project based corporations. These new organizational settings have proven to be more conducive to a setting in which projects and goals arise and are tackled by team based structures rather than hierarchical ones. Within these new frameworks, team oriented goal setting flourished, in part, because of the dynamic relationship between managers and subordinates. These structures create a broader span of control for leaders making it indispensable for them to use more systematic leadership instruments like MBO processes and performance feedbacks. Besides the evaluation of productivity and the reaching of certain goals, the so called “social and networking skills” of employees gained a once unnoticeable relevance. It has been found that these, “social skills”, can be measured through 360 degree feedbacks. Behind this assertion lies the assumption that both personal and operative competencies contribute to the success of a manager and that these competencies are vibrant enough for assess

ment.

In the meantime there are a wide array of studies and experience reports proving the effectiveness of 360 degree feedbacks for both individuals and companies alike.

I: Definition: “What a 360 Degree Feedback really is”.

A 360 degree feedback is based on several opinions about the contributions and behavior of an employee as well as his or her own assessment through a structured procedure. A proper 360 demands that third party evaluations come from groups with a variety of relationships to the focus person: i.e. peers, managers, subordinates external suppliers and customers. The various viewpoints of the different feedback groups within 360 degree feedbacks contribute to comprehensive and authoritative results based on average values.

360 degree feedbacks are methodologically diverse and can, according to what is ultimately sought after, point to an equally diverse range of goals. Nevertheless, there is one guiding principal involved: good feedback should be precise and behavior focused and that focus should be value neutral. Assessments should yield positive change and depict relevant behavioral alternatives that the focus person can implement. Besides the goals deducted for the company setting, a good multi-perspective feedback instrument is especially instructive for the personal development of employees.

* * *

In February, we will be putting up many more posts on this topic as part of our "360 Degree Feedback Month".

PLEASE NOTE: On February 20th 2009, the President and CEO of HR-Meter International, Christina Dietzsch-Kley, will be hosting an informative Webinar on the topic of 360 Degree Feedback implementation and follow-through. 

To attend this event or to request a copy of our 360 Degree Feedback study:

The Coming Flood

Not every industry is hurting right now. Many businesses are even hiring. Just take a look at Monster.com or Careerbuilder.com. There are a lot of open positions...

But with rising unemployment and the fluidity of marketable skills, comes the inevitable flood of job hungry candidates knocking at the door.

The number of online job postings at sites like Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com might have fallen in the last couple of months but the number of applicants crawling these sites has ratcheted up tremendously. Given the job market and the purpose of these sites, that's obvious...

But what might not immediately come to mind is the stress this is putting on the companies that are hiring. All of a sudden, the number of qualified candidates seeking employment is through the roof (and that number is still growing).  A lot of our clients are telling us that they are now spending as much time just organizing their applicant pool as they used to spend (total) on filling all of their empty desks.

The last thing that a recruiter or manager or whomever whats to have to do right now is to blindly pitch 50% of their applicants simply to 'narrow it down a little'. To put it another way, there are a ton of really smart, well qualified people on the market right now and you simply cannot afford to run the risk of rejecting A-candidates just because you don't have time to look at everyone's application.

Now, a lot of really big companies have applicant tracking software that can help them with this a bit, massive departments dedicated to hiring,  and whole teams that spend their day's conducting interviews. 

Fine. But what about small and medium sized businesses that A) don't have the above resources already in place B) don't have the funds to puts said resources in place (even if they wanted to) C) don't have 10K (minimum) to drop on fancy applicant tracking software?

Well, it seems to me that there are at least 3 (this is certainly not an exhaustive list) resources to turn to:

1) You could "blindly pitch some percentage of your applicants to narrow it down a little". [BAD]

2) You could turn to a local recruiter. Your local recruiter has already done a lot of the work for you. [Decent]

3) You could start using your own basic pre-selection 360 tool (which is what the recruiter is doing anyway) and cut out the middle man. [Best]

We talked about a little of this before the flood: See "New Tricks" and the employeement report just below this post...