employee 360 feedback survey

360 degree feedback provides the employee with a view of his or her effectiveness by giving performance feedback from an employee's supervisor, peers, reporting staff members, co-workers and customers.

The feedback should be based on the organization's desired skills and behaviors for accomplishing its mission, vision and goals. For consumer-oriented employees, the feedback should focus on skills and behaviors related to customer expectations.

The benefit of 360 degree employee feedback is the identification of strengths, weaknesses, mentoring insights and areas needing professional development. 360 degree feedback provides many positive outcomes, including:

• Improved Feedback From More Sources: These sources include customers, peers, reporting staff, co-workers and supervisors.
• Team Development: Feedback from team members will help the employee work more effectively with co-workers, as well as help make the employee more accountable to the team for their communication and performance.
• Organizational Needs Assessment: Companies can become more aware of the need for understanding personal and organizational development needs.
• Mentoring Needs Assessment: Career and personal development information are provided by peers and supervisors.
• Supervisor Risk Control: Feedback from a broad number of individuals in a variety of interfacing positions helps to manage problem employees and minimize discrimination based on race, age and gender.
• Training Needs Assessment: Aggregation of employee and rater information provides a way to clearly identify and measure training priorities, scheduling of classes and performance goals.
• Interpersonal Skill Assessment: Since frontline employees often struggle with meeting the needs of the customer and the needs of the company, they need valuable feedback about the quality of service they provide and how they can improve their reliability, promptness and quality.

360 degree feedback processes are not without problems. The following are points of caution and concern:

• Managing Expectations of a Magic Bullet: 360 degree feedback is simply a feedback system. It must be integrated into a complete performance management system.
• Building the Process: The organization must translate its strategic goals into job performance measures that include competencies, descriptions and duties. These competencies must be measured as part of the 360 feedback and then tracked as part of the organization's growth process.
• Evaluation and Supervisor Training: In order for the employee (with the help of supervisors, HR staff, and other critical managers) to develop action plans based on feedback, the individuals providing the feedback should be trained in providing detailed, constructive and actionable feedback.
• Focus on Strengths: Great managers focus on employee strengths, not weaknesses. The key to developing valuable employees through feedback is to chip off a few rough corners and then help them do what they do best.
• Avoid Data Overload: Multi-rater feedback in the form of 360 degree feedback systems must be well organized so feedback can be easily collected and accessed, saving time and increasing the quality of the process.

360 feedback surveys will promote employee growth and development in a supportive organizational environment. When properly used, 360 degree feedback increases powerful problem solving and develops productive employees.