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.

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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:

Customized Knowledge Solutions

It takes a long time for a method, application or technique to become "Best Practice". It has to circulate through the journals, get "workshopped" in the business schools, get implemented in the fortune 500's and then make its way to the trade shows in the form of keynote addresses and on and on until it reaches your desk. 

But what if you had a hint as to what the future "Best Practices" will be? What if you could listen in at the point between "the journals" and "the workshops"? Well, if you knew the right journals to check and you read through them, then you would be off to a good start. Or, maybe you have Lexis-Nexis business; that's a good start, too. But you also need the time to do this.

We now offer Customized Knowledge Solutions.

We hunt down the next "Best Practices" for you. We search ALL the relevant databases (not just Lexis-Nexis), we read and digest all the relevant journals, we have the time.

We have started to collect and structure knowledge on request. 

Here's how it works:

1) You give us a topic such as:

• Leadership Learning
  
• Leadership Training
  
• Employee Assessments
  
• Organizational Commitment
  
• Talent Management
  
• Employee Relations
  
• Employee Confidence
  
• Executive Talent
  
• Innovative Talent
  
• Leader Member Exchange
  
• Performance Management
  
• Organizational Engagement
  
• Work Group Integration
  
• Whatever you want…
  

2) We RESEARCH that topic in depth, picking through databases like:

• Academic Search Premiere
  
• Lexis-Nexis Business
  
• Lexis-Nexis Academic
  
• JStore
• PubMed
• PsycINFO
• PsycPUB
• Web of Science
• WorldCat
• ProQuest

4) These databases search through thousands of relevant journals such as:

• Educational Management Administration & Leadership
  
• Journal of Information Science
  
• Social Studies
  
• Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
  
• Theory into Practice
  
• Economist
  
• Social Indicators Research
  
• Leader to Leader
  
• Journal of Psychology
  
• Behavior Modification
  
• Expert Systems with Applications
  
• Workforce Management
  
• Journal of Applied Psychology
  
• Behavior Modification
  
• Expert Systems with Applications
  
• Workforce Management
  
• Gender, Work & Organization
  
• T + D
  
• And thousands more...

4) We read and digest the most relevant journal articles from the most relevant journals and prepare for you the following:

• The Abstracts from several relevant articles
• A comprehensive digest of article "take aways"
  
• Information on how to obtain the full articles
• Information on the availability of managerial techniques relevant to the article topics
• Information on how to implement existing or non-existing techniques, tools, etc on the basis of this new knowledge.
• Insight into the future "Best Practices"

For more information on Customized Knowledge Solutions, or to perform a trial "search", please send us an e-mail to "info@hr-meter.com"

Crisis of Confidence: Averted

Morale is low in a lot of workplaces. Employees are worried about losing their jobs. They are wondering if the good, hard work they are doing is being noticed by managers. Managers, are worried about numbers (sales, leads, budgets, etc) and are not particularly worried about their employees... That is worrisome.

It's funny how, in times like these, the hierarchy gets magnified. Everyone looks up. All eyes to the top. When you see the eyes going up, you can bet the morale is going down.

But managers can do a lot to get their employees eyes focused back on their work by instilling some confidence. Remember, your employees want to know that the work they are doing is being noticed because their fear is, that if it isn't, then neither are they. And if they aren't being noticed, then they are just a drain in the budget and their time is limited.

So, at a minimum, take a moment to recognize the work that your employees are doing. Even better, do a survey to find out what is important to them right now. Ask them questions. When your employees see that you are interested, they will feel more motivated and less worried and their eyes will look down and refocus.

It's only a crisis because we call it a crisis. So, it's a crisis of confidence.

Benefits Installments

We've been toying with the idea of adding a regular "Benefits Installment". That is, we have been considering broadening our topics of reflection to include regular discussions of employee benefits. This is an HR blog and we feel that it's quality and utility could improve from this kind of expansion.

Now, HR-Meter does not do any work in the field of employee benefits and, so, HR-Meter will not be writing such an installment. Rather, in the spirit of our recent upgrades, we will rely on guest 

authors with significant employee benefits experience to write our "Benefits Installment".

It is our hope that our readers will find these installments interesting and valuable.

Searching for the Right Talent – An Overlooked Resource

In an effort to improve the variety of our content, we have invited posts from guest authors. Today, we feature the first in a series of posts from exceptional HR professionals. Enjoy!

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In the never ending pursuit of finding the right talent, one large group of individuals is often overlooked, misunderstood or sometimes outright ignored. But the 53 million Americans with disabilities are an untapped resource that can easily meet most challenges in many companies.

The most diverse companies are the most successful. Our experience has been that diversity breeds innovation and innovation is a building block for success. By giving ALL people an opportunity, no matter how society chooses to label them, employers must look beyond the label and directly at the individual. That is another step in eliminating barriers to work for people with disabilities.

Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (ACS) recently started a major push to tap into this labor pool by partnering with hundreds of organizations across the country that assist with the employment and placement of people with disabilities. Through these partnerships we now have more qualified, dedicated and motivated people that will improve our bottom line. We are convinced that these individuals could be successful not only at ACS, but other organizations as well.

Early internal research shows that employees with disabilities are three times as likely to remain employed when compared to the non-disabled population. While it is too early to say for certain why this is so, we have theories based on our initial success. For example, some of our employees with disabilities tell us they have literally been looking for a job for years. That persistence translates into loyalty and dedication once they find a position.

People with disabilities are employed at about half the rate of people without disabilities, according to the Employment and Disability Institute at Cornell University. About 22 million Americans ages 21 to 64, or about 13 percent of the working-age population, have a disability. Only 38 percent of persons with disabilities are employed, compared with 80 percent of Americans without a disability. Among college graduates, 55 percent of persons with disabilities are employed, compared with 83 percent who do not have a disability, according to the Web site Disabilitystatistics.org. There is a large, well educated talent pool of people who are able to make a difference if they can be matched up with the right opportunity.

Despite this large pool of talented potential employees, many employers, hiring managers and recruiters fear there will be an added cost if they hire a person with a disability. Accommodations do not always come with a cost. The Office of Disability Employment Policy's Job Accommodation Network (JAN) reported that 68% of job accommodations made cost less than $500.

Many of the accommodations simply require awareness by the employee’s manager. That type of continued education needs to include ongoing training to employees and managers regarding hiring, managing, supporting and promoting people with disabilities.

Some accommodations, actually make recruiting easier. For example, ACS recruiters work with the Kentucky Office For the Blind counselors and blind or visually impaired applicants to identify their unique work skills and how their attributes can best be utilized. By modifying a pre-employment test to utilize alternative technology that makes the testing process more accessible for the blind and visually impaired, recruiters were able to provide Office For the Blind counselors with the necessary tools to conduct the testing at their offices. This ensured that blind and visually impaired applicants had the accommodations they needed at a location where they frequented in order to test and apply for positions, while ACS gained a larger applicant pool.

There may be some costs for some accommodations, but the Job Accommodation Network reports that for every dollar spent on accommodations, the company received $28 in benefits. Open jobs cost companies money – lost productivity, cost to locate, hire and train a new hire and the cost of churning through multiple hires until a good fit is finally found. A dedicated and committed recruiting team is required to make these potential savings materialize.

Knowing where to find people with disabilities and then establishing solid and trusting relationships with agencies that partner with those individuals is the first step. In the first few months of this program’s existence, our team of diversity recruiters has established partnerships with state and local vocational rehabilitation agencies and organizations such as community and local government groups, college disability services offices, self-advocacy, independent-living organizations, as well as veterans’ organizations and others that provide services to people with disabilities such as Goodwill. Once these partnerships are cemented, a steady flow of referrals from these agencies can be expected.

There are countless people with disabilities who have accomplished great things through the years. Franklin D. Roosevelt had polio and used a wheelchair. Ludwig Von Beethoven was deaf when he composed his 9th Symphony. There have also been actors, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners as well. There is no reason corporations can not open their doors to these potential employees. It’s ability, not the disability that matters.

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About our guest Author: 

Lora Villarreal is Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer for Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (ACS). She is the visionary charged with making ACS’ disability recruiting program successful. Villarreal has more than 20 years of business, human resources, and administration experience.

Upcoming Webinar

I need to plug a pretty exciting webinar that we will be hosting on December 11th, 2008.

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"What learning experiences are companies proposing to their executive talent to get them ready to secure strategic relevance and fuel business growth?" 

Dan Fisher and Michel Buffet will provide some answers to this question based on their experience of designing and delivering customized leadership and management training programs to organizations. More specifically, they will address the new business case for leadership development, breakthrough and practical approaches to keep leaders engaged and committed to learning, and robust ways to measure impact and ROI.  

Time & Location: 1:30 PM Central Standard Time as a global event on your laptop

Keynote Speakers: Dan Fisher and Michael A. Buffet, live from New York

Dan Fisher, PhD: Dan is a managing partner at Fisher Rock Consulting. He provides consultation on selecting, developing, and utilizing senior leadership capital within the context of positional demands, strategic goals, and organizational culture to clients across a wide range of industries. He has extensive experience assessing senior executives and providing them with critical insights and information on their pivotal strengths, key developmental needs, and potential derailers. He is often retained by clients to coach executives on being more effective leaders and achieving breakthrough results. Dan provides high stakes assessment on executives, for internal and external selection, and has designed and delivered leadership development programs for some of today’s top global companies. Prior to co-founding Fisher Rock Consulting, Dan was Director of Assessment Services for Worklab Consulting, a subsidiary of the law firm Seyfarth Shaw. A partial list of the clients he has worked with to date includes Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America,  Barclays Capital, ICAP, Highbridge Capital Management, Andor Capital MasterCard, McGraw-Hill, ADP, GE, Ciba Specialty Chemicals, Eaton, Hewlett Packard, DoubleClick, Renegade, Alltel, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Dan received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of California at Santa Barbara and completed his post-doctoral studies at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, where he later became a faculty member. In addition to serving on the board of The Metropolitan New York Association for Applied Psychology and the American Psychological Association’s Society for Consulting Psychology, Dan is an active member of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. 

Michel A. Buffet, PhD: Michel Buffet is a partner at Fisher Rock, a consulting firm that works with senior leaders and Human Resources executives on organizational change and custom talent management solutions. Before joining Fisher Rock, Michel was a Partner at Oliver Wyman and for over 10 years, worked in the areas of organizational design, team and board effectiveness, executive talent management, and organizational assessment.  Prior to this, Michel conducted cross-cultural training and development at the Training Management Corporation and at the Prudential Intercultural Services.  He also worked on various applied measurement projects at Citibank Bankcards and for the Department of Personnel of New York City. Michel holds a PhD in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University and a DESS in Social Clinical Psychology from the University of Paris.  He was a contributor to Relationships That Enable Enterprise Change: Leveraging the Client Consultant Connection (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 2002).  His most recent article on executive onboarding appeared in the October 2007 issue of Talent Management.  He has presented his work at several business forums on organizational transformation and leadership.  He is a member of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the Metropolitan New York Association of Applied Psychology, the American Psychological Society, and the French-American Chamber of Commerce of New York.  He is bilingual in French and English and fluent in Spanish.  He lives in Princeton, NJ.

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If you would like to attend this event, please send an email to info@hr-meter.com with the subject line "Upcoming Webinar"

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...