Annual Reviews: Are You Really Getting the Full Picture?

September 26, 2014

Don’t look now. Q4 is just around the corner. And for managers, that means it’s time to start thinking about performance reviews.

Performance reviews. We’ve all been through them, and chances are, they’ve actually been unhelpful more often than not. The truth is they can vary significantly not only from company to company, but from manager to manager, and the odds of you actually having a productive performance review meeting are limited to how much the person sitting across from you consider them a priority.
Instead of placing the task of offering constructive feedback and coaching solely on the manager’s shoulders, another approach some companies are taking is getting more parties involved. The idea is that employees are far more likely to receive a balanced, well-rounded, and helpful review if it includes feedback from others within and outside of the organization they regularly interact with, in addition to the person they directly report to.
One example of this type of all-encompassing performance review is the 360-degree review.

What is a 360 Review?

A 360-degree review is a great way to enable employees to gain valuable insight from all levels of the business to get a better overview of their strengths, weaknesses, and potential areas of improvement. The parties that are typically polled for the 360-review are peers, customers, superiors, and subordinates. This is the foundation that sets the 360-degree review apart — the ability to review the employee’s impact within all of these areas provides greater opportunity for the employee to improve upon any reoccurring areas of improvement.
The goal of the 360-review is to create an environment that allows the employee to view his or her contribution and performance in areas such as leadership, teamwork, work habits, communication, management, interpersonal interaction, accountability, and other more role-specific areas depending on the employee’s job.

3 Mistakes to Avoid

The key to implementing a successful 360-review is to be extremely thoughtful about exactly how you are going to structure the review and explain it to employees. After all, the common denominator of any successful process change within an organization is the ability to introduce it in a positive light that encourages employees to embrace the change as an opportunity for growth.
That said, there are many reasons why 360 reviews may not work for you. Outside of niche impediments, there are three core factors that can get in the way of a smooth implementation.
1) 360 Review Feedback Should Not Be Directly Tied to Promotions/Bonuses
The first area to focus on is that the 360-review should not be tied directly to merit pay or promotions. This will ultimately skew the data and give incorrect responses. The goal is to obtain a snapshot of what the employee is excelling at and where they can improve. If the review is tied directly with a merit increase, some employees might not be as open in the criticism of their peers and managers, which will ultimately diminish the review’s integrity.
2) Feedback Should Be Confidential
The next point of focus is to ensure that each panel group (peers, customers, superiors, and subordinates) are large enough to ensure that comments will remain confidential and anonymous. The rule of thumb is to ensure that the groups have at least five members each. Confidentiality is the most important aspect of successfully implementing a 360-degree review. If the parties do not feel that they can appropriately express their ideas and opinions, then they will not be encouraged to give honest answers.
3) Providing Feedback Should Be Quick and Easy
The last aspect that can be detrimental to setting up any new review process within your organization is having the confidential surveys be too excessive or time consuming to complete and organize. Surveys should be compiled of multiple-choice questions based on a simple ranking system, such as 1 – 5 with 5 being the highest. It is also good to have a few open-ended questions to allow the reviewer to recommend areas of improvement.

Are You Utilizing 360 Reviews?

I’d love to hear your feedback. What’s working and what’s not working for you?
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Recruiter

<strong>Brandon DeWitt</strong> is a Talent Acquisition Manager at Criteo <a href="http://www.criteo.com/">Criteo</a>. Prior to that, Brandon was a Talent Specialist at OpenView, focused on recruiting engineering candidates, and also previously served as a contract recruiter for CVS Caremark where he sourced candidates in a variety of functional areas nationwide.