Explain 360 Degree Evaluation
Explain 360 Degree Evaluation
Introduction
Evaluation and feedback are important elements of an organisation’s performance and management. At an individual level, it helps a person understand his or her strengths and weaknesses. Most common form of evaluation technique in an organisation is appraisal of subordinates by their bosses. 360 degree feedback is a relatively new and comprehensive form of feedback system. The paper discusses the 360 degree feedback, its benefits and disadvantages in an organisational setting.
Meaning of the 360 Degree Feedback
According to CIPD (2013), the 360 degree feedback is a performance appraisal system that gathers feedback on an individual from a number of sources, typically including colleagues, direct reports and customers. In contrast to the traditional method of appraisal, the 360 degree feedback helps overcome individual biases in performance evaluation. These biases are more frequent to occur in larger organisations having multiple level of hierarchy, where bosses face difficulty in understanding individual contribution of people having qualitative deliverables. In such cases, the 360 degree feedback enables better assessment of employee by compiling appraisals of multiple stakeholders. Here, stakeholder means people who are directly or indirectly impacted by the work of a particular employee. Customers, colleagues, immediate superiors are all involved in the 360 degree appraisal of an employee.
Benefits of 360 Degree Feedback
There are many benefits of having a 360 degree feedback system. Firstly, it a more comprehensive system of appraisal as it uses multiple sources of data. According to Heathfield (2013), the 360 degree feedback is a method and a tool that provides each employee the opportunity to receive performance feedback from his or her supervisor and four to eight peers, reporting staff members, co-workers and customers. Thus, it reduces individual biases and increases accuracy of feedback. Not only this, it also helps gain employee trust as this system brings about more transparency in the appraisal process.
Secondly, employees get to have a better perspective of their strengths and areas of development. Even managers get to understand their subordinates better. Thus, both employee and manager can work towards improving employee effectiveness by imparting necessary training and optimally utilising skill set of every employee. As a result of this, employee’s efficiency, morale and job-satisfaction can be significantly improved.
Thirdly, it gives an opportunity to employees to channelize their view of their managers in a systematic manner. According to Hearst Communications (2013), the 360-degree feedback is ideal for conducting appraisals for top-level executives. This is because top-level executives are, otherwise, unable to get a critical and genuine feedback about them.
Disadvantages of 360 Degree Feedback
The 360 degree feedback system is also fraught with challenges. There are a few disadvantages of the system that cannot be overlooked. Firstly, the 360 degree feedback system gives a lot of power to individual employees. Honesty in evaluation is the essence of this structure. Considering the nature of boss-subordinate relationship, employees can be too critical about their bosses at times. Since cumulative feedbacks are taken into account for assessment of performance, incidences of dishonest feedback may affect the quality and accuracy of feedback. Secondly, consistency is output and ability to interpret it effectively is also a challenge. Having individual evaluation session is easy, but integrating the evaluation process, selecting the right feedback tool and providing accurate results are difficult.
Conclusion
It can, thus, be concluded that the 360 degree feedback system is conceptually an excellent tool for performance appraisal. It helps improve effectiveness of the entire evaluation process. It also builds in employees trust in the system. It is more comprehensive than the traditional tools and help overall development of an employee. The 360 degree feedback system can also be effective for top management evaluation. But, there are a few operational level difficulties in making the process effective, which needs to be focussed upon while implementing this tool for organisations.
References
CIPD (2013). Feedback – 360 degree . Retrieved from http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/factsheets/360-degree-feedback.aspx
Hearst Communications (2013). What Are the Benefits of 360 Degree Feedback? Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/benefits-360-degree-feedback-1929.html
Heathfield, Susan M. (2013), 360 Degree Feedback: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. Retrieved from http://humanresources.about.com/od/360feedback/a/360feedback.htm
