Employee feedback is critical to growth and development, but manager-driven performance reviews only capture one dimension of an employee’s performance. 360 degree feedback offers a more comprehensive evaluation of an employee by compiling the perspectives of those who work above and below the employee, as well as those in other departments and outside the organization.
It can be a powerful tool, particularly for executives who want to hone their leadership skills, so it’s important you implement it correctly.
What Is 360 Degree Feedback?
360 degree feedback aims to identify an employee’s strengths and weaknesses by gathering observations from their manager, teammates and others who work closely with them.
What Is 360 Degree Feedback?
360 degree feedback gathers input from multiple people in an employee’s orbit: managers, direct reports and any other people who work closely with the employee — sometimes even clients. The feedback is kept anonymous, freeing up team members to provide candid feedback.
While a performance review may focus more on goals and metrics, a 360 degree feedback assessment provides a more well-rounded view of the employee’s strengths and weaknesses — particularly with their ability to communicate, collaborate and manage a team.
Why Implement a 360 Feedback Process?
The 360 feedback process recognizes that individuals may show up differently with their manager than they might with their direct reports or colleagues in different departments. By gathering perspectives from all of these different vantage points, the 360 degree feedback process aims to paint a more comprehensive portrait of an employee’s strengths and weaknesses.
“Managers typically see employees through a certain lens or paradigm,” Matthew Scagnelli, chief human resources officer at Leaf Home, told Built In. “I find that the power in 360s is really that feedback from peers, from direct reports, from others outside your organization. I believe those individuals see a person almost in a more real fashion than their direct manager does.”
How Is 360 Degree Feedback Used?
360 degree feedback has multiple utilities, but 90 percent of companies use 360 feedback for employee or leadership development, according to data from 3D Group, a HR consultancy specializing in 360 degree feedback.
While primarily a development tool, 360 degree feedback is also used for performance reviews, succession planning and identifying high-potential leaders, 3D Group President Dale Rose told Built In.
If 360 degree feedback is used in a performance review, it should be considered one source of data — not the sole source. And it shouldn’t be used to determine compensation or to stack rank employees against each other.
“If organizations take a balanced approach, [360s] can be a really strategic tool in helping organizations think about who their top talent is, how to create customized development experiences and really invest in their leaders,” Lisa Sterling, chief people officer at Perceptyx, told Built In.
Advantages of 360 Feedback
Enhances Self-Awareness
Receiving feedback from people who work under, above and parallel to you is a good way to illuminate your blindspots. While that sort of feedback can be difficult to hear, it is often necessary for growth to take place.
“A lot of times, we have our own self perception of how we lead and how we show up,” Scagnelli said. “And a lot of times that is different from how other people perceive us.”
Fosters Professional Development
360 feedback can tell you what your teammates think of your ability to communicate, collaborate and demonstrate critical skills like decision-making and problem-solving. Once you’ve identified your strengths and weaknesses, you can work with your manager or a coach to create a plan to enhance your skills, develop your weak spots and learn new skills that can spur your professional growth.
Improves Team Collaboration
360 degree feedback gives teams an opportunity to share feedback that can help everyone work together more effectively. It facilitates an open dialogue that otherwise might not occur, giving participants the direction they need to be a better boss, coworker or employee.
HR leaders can also provide the framework for what a successful team looks like by asking participants to evaluate each other on their adherence to company values. This ensures all employees are aligned.
Boosts Employee Engagement
Employees are more likely to feel engaged in their work when they receive valuable feedback that supports their professional development. This in turn drives retention, productivity and business success.
“When organizations utilize these in a developmental and performance-oriented way, you can get people more engaged because there is a demonstration of commitment to a person’s growth and development, and to performance improvement,” Sterling said.
Helps Identify and Develop Leaders
360 degree feedback is useful for identifying and developing leaders. The success of a leader hinges on their ability to work with others, so it’s important for them to know how they are perceived and can potentially change to become a better leader. 360 degree feedback can uncover hidden information that is key to leadership development, like whether employees feel heard or whether their manager thinks they manage priorities well. That feedback can be especially useful for new leaders, Scagnelli said, as it can be used to “mold, craft and curate that leader’s style and approach based on that feedback from the team.”
Disadvantages of 360 Feedback
Requires Time and Energy
The 360 feedback process can be time-consuming for HR teams as well as participants, some of whom may be filling out feedback for multiple employees. This can feel like a burden for employees — especially if they don’t see any benefit to it.
“If it feels like I just spent three hours providing feedback to my peers, and I’m not really sure where it’s going to go or if anything’s going to come of it, that can decrease trust in the organization and decrease engagement in future feedback cycles,” Nani Vishwanath, DEI consultant at The Courage Collective, told Built In.
Subjective or Biased Feedback
Anonymous raters who are not trained in providing constructive feedback may write down spiteful comments, sweeping generalizations and other negative feedback that is biased or unhelpful.
“With an uneducated group of contributors to this process, you can get much more subjectivity entering into the experience than you can objectivity,” Sterling said.
Misaligned Expectations
If HR leaders and managers fail to articulate what employees can expect from a 360 degree feedback program, or don’t include any followup, employees may lose trust in the process and the organization.
“If you don’t take any action other than giving a person a report or having a conversation, it really could be perceived as just a check-the-box exercise,” Sterling said.
How to Create a 360 Degree Feedback Program
1. Develop a Feedback Culture
Before rolling out a 360 degree feedback program, establish a feedback culture. Employees should feel like they have the psychological safety to share feedback with others, and they should be accustomed to receiving feedback through one-on-one meetings and day-to-day conversations. Without this culture in place, employees may withhold feedback because they don’t trust the process.
2. Define the Purpose of the Program
When designing and implementing a 360 feedback program, understand what you hope to achieve — and how the process can support that goal.
“Are you trying to change the leadership culture or just support a single high-potential leader,” Rose asked. “Are you trying to align a group around a common set of important behaviors or inform your annual performance cycle? Most design choices will be influenced by clarity of purpose.”
3. Get Managers and Leaders to Buy In
While the HR team plays an instrumental role in the design and implementation of the 360 degree feedback process, they are not responsible for carrying it out entirely.
“This really needs to start with the leaders,” Sterling said. “When leaders are supportive of this and are communicating about it with their people and the participants, you see a greater adoption and you see greater value out of the experience.”
4. Design the Framework
Develop a timeline for the process and decide if you are going to partner with a HR software vendor with a module that can collect and store feedback. Collaborate with company leaders to develop 360 feedback questions that reflect the purpose of the program, any role-specific competencies and the cultural values of the organization.
5. Communicate With Participants
Articulate the purpose of the initiative, how the feedback will be used and what happens after the feedback has been gathered.
“These are individual humans that are exposing themselves and being vulnerable to receiving feedback from all different perspectives,” Sterling said. Explaining how the feedback will be used “is going to be really important.”
If people feel that 360s are used as a “gotcha tool,” either as a feedback recipient or as a rater, they will be less likely to provide candid feedback and less likely to participate, Scagnelli said.
6. Select Raters
In most organizations, the feedback recipient selects the raters, and their choices are reviewed and approved by their manager or a HR leader.
This method can produce biased results, though, if the feedback recipient selects people who are less likely to give them constructive criticism about their weaknesses.
“They need to be people who truly can provide you with comprehensive, actionable and accurate feedback,” Sterling said. “Not just people who are going to tell you what you want to hear.”
Likewise, if managers or HR leaders are selecting raters, they should not select raters that have a known conflict, as they may give unfairly negative feedback. To avoid these dilemmas, Vishwanath suggests the selection process be a collaborative exercise between an individual and their manager.
7. Train Raters
Train raters on how to give constructive feedback and the importance of grounding any feedback they provide in real-world examples of that behavior.
Raters should also be trained to avoid well-known feedback biases, like letting an employee’s positive or negative attribute overshadow their other traits or limiting feedback to examples from the past month instead of the past year.
8. Request, Collect and Share Feedback
Once the feedback is collected and analyzed, it can be shared by the employee’s manager or a feedback coach. Feedback coaches, which are used by 88 percent of companies, increase the ROI of the process by a large margin, Rose said.
When sharing feedback with employees, remove any identifying details that will disclose the identity of the rater. But when possible, share quotes from raters’ responses, as these open-ended responses are more helpful than numerical ratings.
9. Activate the Feedback
To ensure that employees are growing from the 360 process, companies should transform actionable feedback into an employee development plan that provides direction for career advancement, resources for skill development and a timeline to hold employees accountable to their development goals.
“It’s a partnership between HR and the leaders in the company to make sure that the results are activated and that they become part of a continuous conversation, whether that’s about enabling someone’s performance more effectively or enabling somebody’s growth and development,” Sterling said.
360 Degree Feedback Example Questions
360 degree feedback surveys typically ask respondents to evaluate their peers on closed-ended statements using a five-point Likert scale. The survey might leave extra space for raters to elaborate on why they chose this rating.
Here are a few examples of closed-ended statements on a 360 degree feedback assessment:
- This employee communicates clearly with other team members.
- This employee embodies our company values.
- This employee is eager to find solutions when confronted with a challenge.
- This employee appreciates diverse perspectives.
- This employee accomplishes their work at a high standard.
- This employee collaborates effectively with teammates.
The survey will also ask raters to answer open-ended questions. Here are some examples:
- What is this person’s biggest strength, and how has this strength contributed to the team?
- What is this employee’s biggest area for improvement, and how would their improvement in this area benefit the team?
- Is there anything else you would like to share about this employee?
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the 360-degree feedback method?
The 360-degree feedback method evaluates an employee’s strengths and weaknesses based on the perceptions of people who work closely with the individual.
What is an example of good 360 feedback?
A good 360 degree feedback program will have a clear purpose, and it will be supported by company leadership. The implementation will be bolstered by communications that detail what employees can expect from the process, and it will educate raters on how to give constructive criticism. Most importantly, a good 360 feedback process will be connected to actionable steps that advance employee development.
