Annual Review Process — a monster that almost all employers in an organization collectively dread, right?
Well, the stale and outdated review process doesn’t necessarily have to send shivers down everybody’s spine as we have more efficient, reliable, and effective feedback tools, especially 360-degree feedback.
Google implemented it across its disciplines and received astounding results as over 75 percent of its employees found 360-degree quite useful!
Therefore, in this post, we will help readers understand 360-degree feedback from inside and out, its benefits, applications, and some of the best feedback examples.
Let’s dig right into it, shall we?
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What is 360-degree employee feedback?
Employees across industries are used to receiving structured and formal feedback from their supervisors, especially when the time comes for the annual performance review.
Believe it or not, the yearly performance evaluation is still the only tool managers use to review employees and teams.
Breathing fresh air into this feedback cycle is the 360-degree feedback system that considers an employee’s work ethic, competencies, challenges, areas of improvement, and work style while providing space for its team members to share their insights.
360-degree feedback helps receive frequent and constructive feedback as employees get the opportunity to give extra context and specific examples that eventually make leadership strive for improved employee growth and experience.
What are the benefits of 360-degree feedback?
1. Promotes dialogue with other team members
A 360-degree feedback system opens gates for constructive criticism and conversations related to the performance review.
The participants in the review process can follow up with their managers and other team members to eventually “break the ice” and create a culture for open performance conversations.
2. Increase employee engagement and encourage personal development
The main goal of a 360-degree feedback process is to establish a work environment that promotes personal and professional development.
The review generated from the process allows participants to develop a feedback-based plan as it aggressively exposes their perceptions, blind spots, and even employee strengths that were overlooked.
3. Makes the employee motivated and boosts performance management
360-degree feedback can be followed up with post-assessment 360 surveys, ideally 12 months later, to figure out whether or not the participants can boost their performance. However, this is only possible if the leadership provides participants with proper support.
4. Direct reports increase accountability
A 360-degree feedback system does an excellent job of eliminating ambiguities and providing participants with key specifics to work on.
The information generated through the new review process helps managers create accountability for the behaviors showcased by participants. Moreover, it facilitates consistent expectations throughout an organization.
5. Honest feedback helps make the employee communicate
A 360-degree feedback process, unlike one-sided performance feedback, evaluates vital behavior in a working relationship — positive reciprocity.
It gives participants clarity over how they interact with others, how effectively they communicate, whether or not they are open to constructive and anonymous feedback, and other areas that impact relationships at work.
10 Best 360-degree Review Feedback Examples
Now that we are well-acquainted with how 360 feedback surveys work, it’s time we share some of the best 360-degree review feedback examples with you. Let’s get started!
1. Leadership skills
- “The person possesses excellent leadership potential.”
- “The person shows great confidence in their leadership role and can get the best out of other team members.”
- “The person effectively leads work groups and resolves conflicts in a team environment.”
- “The person shows potential to be a good group leader.”
2. Communication skills
- “The person shows excellent verbal communication skills both on personal and group level.”
- “The person shows mediocre presentation and interpersonal skills.”
- “The person communicates clearly and concisely.”
- “The person does not share information and ideas with the team, which shows their controlling nature.”
- “The person does not communicate well and seems arrogant.”
- “The person has improved their interpersonal skills to be more open and honest with team members.”
3. Teamwork skills
- “The person is very easygoing and fits well with any group.”
- “The person is receptive to team feedback and is a perfect team member.”
- “The person is a highly skilled team player.”
- “The person doesn’t prefer a team environment and has difficulty building rapport.”
- “The person has improved at working in a team environment by building strong relationships with members and managing personality clashes.”
4. Conflict-resolution skills
- “The person shows excellent ability to resolve conflicts quickly.”
- “The person has strong opinions but is open to external ideas (team members opinions), allowing the group to focus and work together.”
- “The person comes across as highly opinionated and has difficulty working with team members with opposing ideas.”
5. Creativity skills
- “The person is incredibly creative and always comes up with fresh ideas and creative solutions.”
- “The person shows potential for creative thinking and helps improve team members’ ideas during brainstorming sessions.”
- “The person doesn’t contribute effectively when it comes to brainstorming new ideas, campaigns, and solutions.”
6. Adaptability skills
- “The person is great at using new technology to propel the team forward for effective goal achievement.”
- “The person shows slight discomfort when subjected to new technology at work.”
- “The person needs help to deal with new technology and isn’t able to effectively use new tools to improve efficiency. “
- “The person prefers the older technology and is not inclined to switch to the new tools.”
7. Problem-solving skills
- “The person could improve their problem-solving skills by letting in more than one perspective to achieve a more complete understanding of the situation.”
- “The person sometimes reacts impulsively to new problems and doesn’t step back to contemplate the potential consequences.”
- “The person shows excellent problem-solving abilities as they understand the importance of teamwork when solving problems.”
8. Alignment abilities
- “The person showcases an all-around alignment with the company values and their actions are committed to the company’s vision.”
- “The person has not been meeting their deadlines, which is causing performance-related problems across the team.”
- “The person needs to commit to the company’s mission, vision, and goals with immediate effect and represent the brand in a positive light.”
9. Motivation
- “The person has dropped their productivity recently and doesn’t seem motivated toward the company’s goals of producing quality results.”
- “The person needs to work outside their comfort zone and handle more challenging tasks to boost their morale and motivation.”
- “The person seems to need more autonomy to feel motivated at work.”
10. Efficiency
- “The person feels the need for more resources to become efficient at completing the assigned tasks.”
- “The person has invested their time into training and has recently improved their productivity and efficiency in their role.”
- “The person does not seem to have an effective understanding of the tasks assigned.”
How to use 360-degree feedback?
As we know, the primary objective of 360-degree feedback is to generate deep insights into how employees at an organization function while collecting information related to employee engagement, leadership, teamwork, communication, conflict resolution + more.
Once managers of 360-degree feedback have the information, they can use it to provide employee feedback and facilitate employees’ performance improvement.
In this, managers figure out the areas employees already excel at and which skills they can develop to improve their performance.
However, managers might find it difficult to make their employees share honest and open feedback when completing surveys.
One of the best ways to deal with this is by encouraging organization-wide anonymous and honest feedback that generates honest responses — pushing for overall employee development.
How to write an effective 360-degree feedback question?
Your 360-degree feedback review system will function like a well-oiled machine if you ask questions the right way.
What should you consider when drafting 360 survey questions? Although we have covered this in much detail in one of our previous posts, here are some things you can consider to write better questions.
Managers should make sure the questions are fair and non-judgemental. Questions that are not leading or influencing will attract a large range of responses.
Moreover, managers shouldn’t ask questions on more than one competency at a time, or else they will confuse the participant.
Another crucial aspect of writing effective qualitative feedback questions is language. Make sure the questions are in the language participants understand. There should be no space for overly complex phrases and jargon that inhibit common understanding.
Coming back to core competencies, the survey should ideally ask not more than 8-10 questions related to participants’ key roles in the organization. In other words, the survey should focus on the core areas of their roles.
Final thoughts!
360-degree feedback is an exceptionally effective tool for generating direct reports, providing objective performance analysis of individuals in a team environment, and most importantly, ensuring an excellent feedback culture.
Not only that, it even provides managers insights into how the team reviews the individual — providing an all-around (360-degree) performance analysis to help managers make better decisions.
The advantages of implementing such a contemporary review process are quite obvious.
However, business owners and managers need to have constructive discussions with their employees to help them understand the common goals associated with 360 reviews and what employees can do to contribute to the set goals.
In other words, your 360-degree feedback review process implementation needs to be strategic. We hope you found this article helpful!