180-degree feedback

Analyzing and reviewing employee performance is a process that should adapt to the needs of every company and individual. There are various methods of conducting an appraisal interview, but in the following, we will focus on 180-degree feedback as a performance assessment.

What is 180-degree feedback?

In the case of 180-degree feedback, an employee is assessed by his superior, his colleagues (peers), and customers. We'll come back to this later, but at this point, but the main difference between 180-degree feedback and 360-degree performance appraisal is that it does not involve subordinates.

Feedback providers should have worked with the person to be assessed in one way or another to form an opinion about their professional abilities. Only then can HR departments guarantee that the information gathered is based on experience and offers real value.

Advantages of this method

There are many reasons to use the 180-degree performance appraisal system; after all, it offers numerous advantages for both the company and the employee:

• The 180-degree feedback questionnaire can be adapted to the culture and needs of the company.

• This process does not end with the assessment itself but continues through continuous analysis. It is how HR professionals achieve the best results, especially when they complement these training and education activities.

• Using this method creates credibility for the company.

• Using evaluation systems shows that the company is interested in real performance improvement that promotes professional growth.

• Organizations using evaluation methods see an immediate improvement in communication.

• The appraisal interview is an excellent opportunity to give feedback and motivate the team.

• If well structured, it offers the opportunity to set new goals and clarify the responsibilities of employees.

• The training or education needs can also be checked.

Disadvantages of this type of employee appraisal

Of course, no rating system is perfect, and the 180-degree feedback also has certain disadvantages.

The biggest downside is that the feedback doesn't adapt to high-level employees who regularly interact with outside customers. By limiting the number and scope of feedback providers, meaningful information about the person's performance could be lost in such cases.

A 180-degree feedback questionnaire for the organization

If you have decided on a 180-degree feedback questionnaire in your HR department, please note the following step-by-step instructions to achieve the desired results.

1. Check your company organization chart

An organization chart visually represents the working relationships between employees within a company. Organizational chart software helps to keep track of the performance of the entire organization.

2. Define roles and responsibilities

Within the organization chart, categorize each of the existing roles and define their respective essential duties, responsibilities, and goals. With this information, you can determine at a glance which competencies you need to evaluate. This will help you set new goals in due course.

3. Prepare for the feedback process

Depending on your business’s size, conducting 180-degree feedback can be a considerable challenge and require an enormous amount of time and resources. For this reason, many companies use performance management software as HR software to automate the process and thus make it much faster and more efficient. These tools take care of sending the relevant forms, receiving the information, and feed it into each employee profile. This means that HR departments only have to examine the results, analyze the critical performance assessment indicators and forward them to the employee to be assessed. It saves time and nerves. New call-to-action

4. Draw up a development plan

However, the evaluation process does not end when the results are received. The fascinating and essential process begins: the information received must define a personal development plan that improves the weaknesses identified and makes the strengths usable. The goal is to optimize performance and get better results in the short term. Finally, we recommend that you set up an evaluation calendar and observe and compare the products over several months. The survey process is usually repeated every six months to check improvements and relapses and to track whether the target agreements and KPIs in the employee appraisal have been achieved or not.

Conclusion

The 180-degree feedback and the employee survey can provide valuable and objective data for well-founded measures for targeted changes in the corporate and management culture and thus for increasing efficiency. These advantages seem overwhelming compared to the effort of the most online and almost automatically evaluated survey.