The 360 degree process enables full-circle feedback from several groups of people. It usually includes staff, work colleagues and managers, and can also extend to suppliers, customers or others outside the workplace.

360 degree feedback aims to provide objective perspectives on how people operate within a business. Sound dangerous? Well, it can be if your business hasn’t first built trust with its people.

The 360 degree feedback tool was developed to help individuals gain an expanded view of themselves by comparing their own perceptions of themselves in the workplace with how others perceive them. The end purpose is to create new individual workplace goals and improvements, leading to among other things, better workplace relations and increased job satisfaction.

Typically a 360 degree feedback process involves:

• A self perception profile

This gives the individual an opportunity to express how they see themselves within their environment. It is a self-assessment where the individual selects how often they perform particular behaviours in various workplace scenarios.

• Observer assessments

These assessments are generally completed by peers, managers and direct reports and can include another group, usually from outside the organisation. The observer will be asked to respond to the same list of behaviours selecting how often they have seen the individual perform them.

Does it work?

The 360 degree process sits very comfortably within the performance management and appraisal arena. In its pure form, the idea of 360 degree feedback is very good. After all, how can we hope to improve our performance without feedback? Better still, what if we gain feedback from a number of sources as opposed to one source and build a multi-dimensional picture?

A powerful tool within an environment of trust.

The reality is that this tool is often poorly implemented, or implemented at the wrong stage of an organisation’s development.

Implementing 360 degree feedback when an employer may be trying to performance manage an employee out of the organisation is a classic example of the 'wrong stage'. Under these circumstances the employee will often feel coerced and intimidated, producing far from productive results.

Deploying 360 degree feedback under these circumstances often raises apprehension within a team, effectively isolating employees and if pursued, will become commonly viewed as the modus operandi for ‘showing people the door’.

To maximise the value of the process and ensure it is viewed with trust by employees, it is recommended that 360 degree feedback processes be facilitated by qualified and independent third parties.  This protects and increases the objectivity of the process and typically encourages more open and constructive discussion with regard to the training and development needs of participants.

1. Ensure you use 360 degree feedback as a proactive tool to help build organisational performance, not a reactionary or last minute dash to fix something that has already gone wrong.
2. Conduct a health-check to make sure your organisation is best situated to incorporate a full 360 degree process into its feedback mechanisms.
3. Ensure your managers and employees fully understand the process of 360 degree feedback which will help dispel any concerns or preconceptions and pave the way for more positive outcomes.

If you would like more information on the 360 degree feedback tool please call our National Practice Manager for HR Consulting, Stephen Kohl, on 02 9256 7000 or email him at stephen.kohl@beilby.com.au .  Alternatively, please visit our website at www.beilby.com.au and click on 'Human Resources Consulting' under 'Our Services' for more imnformation.