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.