Staff AppraisalStaff AppraisalSurveying customer opinion is commonplace in marketing and sales. On many occasions we return home on an aeroplane from Torremolinos and complete the end-of-holiday questionnaire. The same is true of the end of course questionnaire about the structure and pace of the course and the approach and skills of "the trainer". The trainer is expected to take note of the thumbs up and thumbs down of the feedback and to adjust their approach next time. In a commercial training situation, the customer feedback may lead to the trainer not being reengaged the next time the course runs. For the end of holiday questionnaire, feedback on particular holiday resort representatives may be collated and get back to the reps concerned via their manager.
The sales and marketing aim is to canvas the extent to which the customer is delighted (or otherwise) by the quality of service they receive and thus how they perceive the supplier. All-in-all the survey is a quality assurance device. The supplier is continuously confronted with customer experience, expectations and concerns. Interest in such feedback has developed into a mechanism to formally gather and return appraisal feedback (hence 360° appraisal) from employees and other "stakeholders" to managers themselves. Basically, the feedback messages relate to "how well we see you managing us and what we think about it".
Thus 360° appraisal ideas take staff appraisal one step further. Rather than primarily focusing one-to-one between supervisor and employee, the emphasis is on a "full circle" survey. The appraisal (survey feedback) formally requires "stakeholders", team members, customers - all those who interface with the processes of performance - to give their assessment. The purpose is, underpinned by a belief that benefits arise from such "quality analysis" and that managers should receive direct data from upward and lateral sources on their performance. This "open" feedback (opinions of others), it is argued will highlight how he/she is perceived in terms of performance in the role. So the spotlight is on the manager - and (the proposition) only good can come of it.
Of course, in a more general sense, the survey feedback can be on "the team's" performance - as seen by other teams plus internal and external clients. It can be on the organisation as a whole or just one function - say - the accounts department. This is general survey feedback. 360° appraisal tends to focus on feedback
Why do it? The reasons must be very clear and careful organisation and design of the survey method itself is essential. It is inadvisable to do it for confused reasons and in an atmosphere of tension.
Questionnaire instruments for 360° appraisal can be bought from various purveyors of "HRM" methods or developed in house. Either way, the schemes can be tested as a pilot (an action research experiment), "debugged" and, if found worthy extended, to the whole organisation. (Note the implication of the metaphor. The argument for the "human system" is couched in the terminilogy of a computer system - development, testing and debugging.
360° appraisal in itself will not solve performance problems or issues. It is presented as a monitoring and measurement device that may support an organisation's development strategy:-
The initiators of 360° appraisal activities need to be clear about
Failure to ask such questions and confront the answers may indicate confused purposes and reveal a managerial cadre - "clutching at straws".
Advocates of the approach may recommend its use as:
Examine carefully the argument that a 360° approach is a way of analysing and defining particular performance problems or that it can be used to rate reward entitlements for managers. How will we confirm the validity and utility of such statements?
Cast your eyes down the above list of applications and evaluate
A 360° policy requires substantial effort to
This is no mean undertaking. A lengthy demanding programme of development, initiation and follow-up is required. The actual feedback mechanisms are difficult to set up. Difficulties will occur in getting the feedback flowing, keeping it going and administered in terms of straight bureaucracy, interpretation and knowing what is to be done with the emergent feedback.
360° appraisal - like ordinary staff appraisal - requires a natural observation process to be formalised. We
Our impressions of each other may be revealed particularly in an open, trusting, sharing, mutually respecting situation. Equally there are reasons why I may hold back in revealing my particular view of you and you of me.
People are like this - in families, in client-contractor relationships, in love and in "neighbours-from-hell-situations" - a point too frequently skimmed over by the social psychology literature. Interpersonal perceptions and relationships ebb and flow. Interpersonal relationships (my thoughts and opinions of you) can be fixed quickly, last long and are mightily difficult to change. Personal whims and preferences and hormones determine how we relate to each other - how long at any one time I want to be with you, whether I enjoy being with you, whether how I feel constrains what I want to do and be when you are around. Of course you can "grow" on me and I can win your respect and love - but equally these can falter and, for reasons not solely related to the workplace.
Organisational membership and 360° appraisal however impose institutional expectations which assume that raw interpersonal relations are left outside work and should not interfere with working relationships. Like ordinary staff appraisal, 360° appraisal is an organisational construction that involves
I am sure that at this point the reader can feel how the writer's natural scepticism and hackles are rising. Disbelief creeps in easily - so .... please .... hold your horses. Evaluate the propositions. Examine the assertions and obtain data on the practices and experiences.
Such a policy initiative can easily take a year to set up and two years to go through a full cycle.
What happens to the information once collected. The ready answer is
"Reflection"!!
This may comprise several activities
360° appraisal is threatening for many people. It can engender anxiety at all levels. For many senior managers and group leaders, the formal feedback usually comes from their own superiors in the organisation - from the top down. This focus on results or achievements. It also is predictable. Feedback on aspects of behaviour is carefully selected and transmitted. Heavy negative feedback is uncomfortable and often in the political world of management - the recipient "gets the message"in a myriad of ways and seeks to move on to another company/job.
360° feedback is threatening as it is received from those on the receiving end. It focuses on
The aim is for managers to become more reflecting and and sensitive to how they are seen by and affect others. Even if others in the organisation do not seek the feedback data or want to use it, such feedback from the "private thoughts" of the sender to the recipitent's "private self" ("how I see me, how I do not see me") - can hurt. It can expose "me" to myself as others see "me". Many of us do not really want to look in the mirror and see outselves as others see us. This is a natural self mediating/protecting process.
Even if I know that I am the only one to see the appraisal report, messages from others (particularly critical, negative ones) can be unexpected and hurtful. Even if I have a strong self concept and am emotionally resilient - I may feel that I can do without the the lid being taken off this "can-of-worms". Perhaps the "can-of-worms" was manageable when we had a protocol to hold back and restrain.
If top management need to recognise these matters. Certainly there needs to be acceptance of policy as a desirable process. A able, sensitive programme co-ordinator is required - a role which requires considerable
360°appraisal supposedly measures performance
Do we really know what these imperative behaviours, values and culture change elements are? How can any kind of meaningful survey with accurate behavioural definitions be designed if we do not know and do not agree? Furthermore, such an atomistic approach requires the competence demands for the target jobs or roles to be declared. If we cannot define these - how can we systematically assure any survey method? .
Survey or questionnaire's coverage must be decided and questions formulated. Tailor-made questionnaires from social psychology consultants are expensive. Various suppliers sell off-the-shelf, generic questionnaires and schemes. But what value is the off-the-shelf product if the coverage and style must fit the values and culture imperatives of the organisation and role related competencies of those being appraised?
how many questions are needed for raters to assess key aspects of the person’s performance.
how able and/or willing will raters be to complete such questionnaires? Do raters really know enough to assess actual behaviour of their subject against the importance of that element in the persons job - and or difficulties of doing it?
what open closed questions, multiple choice questions etc. are to be used.
will the rater construe the meaning of the question and in the way intended?
what semantic differential scales are to be used and what numeric scales 1 - 5, 1-7, 1 - 10, 1-6 (i.e. no middle position)?
The types of report format can vary
We then have to address how to process the incoming feedback.
360° feedback data is personal - even more so than conventional appraisal systems. Who will see it?
If "A" only then the feedback data is not open for supposed strategic and collective purposes.
Such descriptions anticipate the contradictions of 360° feedback method in a cold, harsh, pressurised organisational environment. Assurances are needed on confidentiality and the overall purpose of doing it. People really must believe in the integrity of the organisation in supporting all participants.
Those receiving the feedback can be hurt and become angry and disoriented by the results. This kind of personal feedback can hit you between the eyes ("the person I don't see in me" but you see or "I know I am like this - but that is how I am"). The whole ability problem - the skills of giving and receiving interpersonal feedback as differences between how I see myself and how others see me - is exposed.
I may be pleasantly surprised at the positive value that people place on me - but I may be readily hurt. My modesty may prevail. I may have a thick enough skin to be emotionally resilient - "This is what I know about myself anyway. I can live with it as others do and must - including those who gave the feedback!").
Equally the shutters may go up. I can reject the statements and have my confidence/morale undermined. My motivation and performance is depressed rather than improved.
The danger is the organisation that a laissez faire approach to this. The minimum that is needed to avoid the fickle finger of fate is:-
If the aims of the 360° feedback programme are not clear and upfront, then people will fantasise. Rumour will circulate and the programme can easily become the target of derision. The communication system of presentations, meetings, written explanations, one-to-one conversations etc. needs to be carefully organsied and managed. Above all, communication must be open and early.
The visible commitment of top managers who must not exclude themselves from the process is vital. Continuity, sensitivity, clarification, reassurance and thoughtful response to problems is essential. Remember Murphy's Law. "If you think it won't happen it will". There will be
How is the programme and the process itself to be evaluated? How do we
The interest in 360° appraisal is something for very serious analysis in terms of the validity and dangers of the method. Is it worth it? Have we given sufficient attention to participant support, reflection, action time and meaningful rewards for supposedly changing behaviour - being "different".
We too easily underestimate the important of trust, good communication, administrative systems and planning and the real resources needed for mentoring and facilitation. There are likely to be real problems in measuring true costs and results.
Insight into how people meet client and/or peer expectations may be useful but what other methods, natural and purposeful are available in comparison to a formal, constructed machine of appraisal? This is the most important question to ask before wasting spending time and energy on a new scheme.
If our managerial behaviour is so poor that our staff are too threatened to give good, open, direct feedback then 360° process is unlikely to work. Genuine interest and sensitivity to how others perceive those on the receiving end is integral to performance in every job. This is not something that a personnel department or external psycho-consultancy company can do much about. We would be foolish to rely on a third party to reveal how good our employees or customers feel about us. We may want to check this out periodically with company survey - but this does not have to be 360° appraisal.
If we are to get useful performance feedback from a "team" circle of peers, subordinates and customers then
This processes is not likely to be assisted much by an anonymous, written feedback process harbouring pitfalls of peer evaluation and weak validity.
360° appraisal practice is confronted by its contradictions. On the one hand, the organisation wants to be open, honest and forthright and yet it uses secrecy and anonymity to gather subjective valuations of its employees. Many will resent being asked to judge and be judged by their peers and subordinates anonymously, wondering all the while, who is writing things about them, and is it any of their business anyway. An individual may find difficult to defend themselves (to others and especially to themselves) when encountering "misbehaviour" charges. The actual source of rater concern may be ambiguous and concealed. Significantly the feedback may be on aspects of "the persona" that are extremely difficult to do anything about. Indeed should we be required to "do anything"about them? Perhaps the problem is lack of tolerance on the part of the person giving the feedback.
Such systems must protect against deceit and retribution. As with suggestion schemes, the anonymous survey involves risk of exaggerated opinion which may say more of the speaker than the receiver. There is also the problem of fear of breach of confidentiality and actual breach of confidence. Employee feedback processes have inbuilt, natural checks and balances which enable basic, working relationships to be maintained especially between employees and supervisors. If such relationships are not working, there are many other feedback (safety valve) mechanisms other than 360° appraisal that are available.
There is little research on the approach's usefulness and validity and we need to recognise that those selling 360° packages and training are in the promotional and sales game. Adopting such a policy calls for much deeper analysis into the relevance, validity, utility and acceptability of the approach.
© Created by Chris Jarvis for the BOLA Project.