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360 degree employee feedback is different from traditional annual performance assessments in that it provides performance feedback from an employee’s supervisor, peers, reporting staff members, co-workers and customers.

The employee will often be given the opportunity to respond through a self assessment. 360 degree feedback provides the employee with a view of his or her effectiveness as an employee, co-worker, or staff member.

Feedback should be based on viewable skills and behaviors desired in the organization to accomplish the mission, vision, and goals. For consumer-oriented employees, the feedback should focus on skills and behaviors related to customer expectations.

Those who provide feedback generally interact routinely with the employee receiving feedback.

The benefit of 360 degree employee feedback is the deep identification of strengths, weaknesses, mentoring insights and areas needing professional development.

360 degree feedback provides many positive outcomes, including:

• Improved Feedback From More Sources: Traditional performance metrics take into account only the employee and the manager, however 360 degree feedback includes peers, reporting staff, co-workers, supervisors, and even clients.  It is important to understand how all these parties view the employee and rate his or her effectiveness.

• Team Development: What can the employee do to work more effectively with co-workers?  Team members can provide this feedback and help the employee to be more accountable to the team for their communication and performance.

• Organizational Needs Assessment: 360 degree feedback helps the company understand the need for personal and organizational development.

• Mentoring Needs Assessment: What does the employee need to do to enhance his or her career? 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 can help manage problem employees, as well as help minimize discrimination based on race, age and gender.

• Training Needs Assessment: Aggregation of employee and rater information provides an encompassing view of the organization's training needs. Training priorities, scheduling of classes and performance goals can be clearly identified and measured.

• Interpersonal Skills Assessment: Frontline employees often struggle to balance the needs of the customer and the needs of the company. Employees need the valuable feedback about the quality of service they provide and how they can improve their reliability, promptness, and quality of their services.

360 degree feedback processes are not, however without problems. The following are identified as points of caution and concern.

• Managing Expectations of a Magic Bullet: 360 degree feedback is exactly that… a feedback system. To be utilized correctly, it must be integrated into a complete performance management system.

• Building the Process: 360 degree feedback must be based on those performance goals important to the organization.  The strategic goals of the organization must be translated into job performance measures that include competencies, descriptions and duties.  These competencies must be measured as part of the 360 feedback and tracked as part of the organization's growth process.

• Evaluation and Supervisor Training: Individuals who provide feedback need training about how to provide constructive feedback. Feedback must be detailed, constructive and actionable so that appropriate actions can be taken by the employee. Additionally, the supervisor must be capable of understanding the feedback so that clarification can be given. Supervisors, HR staff, and other critical managers must assist the employee to understand and develop action plans based upon the feedback.

• Focus on Strengths: Great managers focus on employee strengths, not weaknesses. The key to growing 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 that feedback is easily collected and accessed so as to save time and increase the quality of the process.

360 feedback surveys can promote employee growth and development in a supportive organizational environment. When properly used, 360 degree feedback increases positive, powerful problem solving skills and environments and helps to develop more efficient and productive employees.

Employee attitudes, burnout tendencies, passion factors, loyalty, workplace climate, and competitive intelligence are all key indicators of employee satisfaction, retention and productivity.

Qualtrics employee tracking will increase employee satisfaction and reduce employee turnover, thereby strengthening your organization.  Many companies waste their organization’s HR training and mentoring efforts because employees are dissatisfied and leave.  Employee satisfaction can be identified, tracked and improved with timely and accurate survey information.

Key Measures in an Employee Satisfaction Survey

The frontline employee is where company meets the customer. The front line is critical to your business. From the customer’s perspective, your frontline employees are your business. Your organization depends on their service quality, productivity and passion to meet the needs of your customers.

Employee satisfaction surveys help your frontline employees to come together to achieve productivity goals and to provide high-quality customer service and help your company achieve excellence.

Employee satisfaction measures will help craft effective people strategies using our powerful and unique management tools to track indicators of quality, dissatisfaction and customer turnover, and precede actual employee decisions by months.

Find Out How to Measure Employee Satisfaction

By conducting an employee satisfaction survey with Qualtrics, you'll gain valuable information from the people most important in your organization — and fast. The Qualtrics do-it-yourself online survey tools are supported by experts in the survey and HR industry.  Our experts will help you determine how to best measure employee satisfaction and answer questions like:

* What percentage of your employees is happy in their current positions?
* What job related issues are most on the mind of your employees today?
* What changes are most needed to improve morale in your organization?