You’re willing to transform your approach to annual reviews? Traditionally, these meetings have often been limited to a dialogue between the manager and the employee. While this method is familiar, is it really the most effective way to evaluate the performance and potential of your employees?
It's time to ask some critical questions. Can an annual one-on-one truly capture all facets of an employee? How can you be sure that this format doesn't allow for biases or incomplete perspectives?
This is where the 360 Feedback comes into play, offering a more comprehensive and balanced view of employee performance and behaviour.
What is a 360 Feedback?
Often described as the most powerful tool for skill development, the 360 is an unique evaluation method. This assessment gathers feedback from various stakeholders – colleagues, superiors, subordinates, and sometimes clients – on an individual's skills and behaviour within the organisation. Each respondent reflects on the employee's skills to indicate their level of mastery. While this individual appraisal is subjective, it gains objectivity at a broader level, as the multitude of evaluators provides a complete view of the employee.
Unlike traditional tools, this method is particularly effective in measuring key skill mastery, highlighting aspects often overlooked in conventional interviews.
Benefits of Using the 360 in Annual Reviews
In a world where employees increasingly seek recognition and a sense of purpose, the 360 brings a promise of humanity and fulfilment.
It's an original way to conduct annual evaluations and consider the future through skill development. The benefits are numerous:
- A More Comprehensive View of Employee Skills and Behaviours
Based on collecting feedback from various sources, the 360 allows for a more complete view of the employee's skills and behaviours.
For example, an employee may be seen as an excellent team leader by their manager, but as a difficult colleague by their peers. The 360 Feedback can take these differing viewpoints into account to create a more accurate portrayal of the employee.
- A More Objective Evaluation and Significant Time Savings
The 360 reduces perception bias. Each observer brings their perspective, limiting the effects of subjective perception by a single person. Moreover, it saves considerable time as everything happens online, synchronised with email notifications to all participants throughout the evaluation.
- Constructive Dialogue Between the Employee and Manager
In a 360, feedback from various observers can be used to identify an employee's strengths and weaknesses, as well as potential development areas. This dialogue helps the employee better understand their performance and engage in a development process.
- A Better Understanding of Oneself and One's Skills
For the employee, it's a way to see themselves differently and assess their current and potential skills. Emotionally rich, this method naturally stimulates motivation to develop skills. The 360 acts as a natural and healthy engine for self-development, fostering the desire to become a better person, here through skill development. And in another register, this different consideration of employees positively impacts well-being at work.
How to Implement a 360 Feedback in an Annual Review?
The 360 is simple to use. The basic condition is that employees are willing to engage in this approach.
1. Setting Up the Process: The first step is to select the observers who will participate in the evaluation. Evaluators can be colleagues, managers, clients, or partners. It's important to choose evaluators who have the opportunity to observe the employee at work. The approach is then explained to the chosen evaluators, emphasising the anonymity of responses and indicating a deadline for completing the evaluation.
2. The Evaluation: The participant and evaluators each fill out an online questionnaire, rating each skill and behaviour mentioned in the questionnaire. For example, in the Central Test 360 Feedback, skills come from a framework of 60 transversal skills selected for their applicability across a variety of professions and their potential for improvement.
3. The Feedback: Once the evaluations are complete, a report is generated, and a meeting is scheduled to present the results. In an annual review, discussions focus on two aspects: (a) strong skills identified by everyone so the employee is aware of their talents, (b) perception gaps between the employee and the evaluation group to target skills needing improvement. This feedback should be constructive and enable the employee to engage in a development process.
4. The Development Plan: Based on the report elements, in line with the manager's expectations and the employee's needs, actions to develop skills can be chosen and implemented.
Adopting the 360 Feedback in annual reviews is not just a change of method, it's a step towards more dynamic and transparent talent management. It's an opportunity to create a stronger company culture, focused on continuous development and constructive feedback.
