New Assessment Model
360 ̊ feedback is a new model for performance appraisal. It is based on the idea that anonymous feedback from multiple sources is superior to direct feedback from a single source. It overcomes the false perceptions, blind spots and ignorance that may exist in single source assessments.
The story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” can be updated to demonstrate the power of a 360 ̊ feedback process. In the story, the Emperor asks his courtiers how his new clothes look. Even though he is naked, having been tricked by traveling tailors, the courtiers give the response they think the Emperor wants to hear. “Superb,” they tell him. Since the Emperor knows that people often tell others what they want to hear, he asks everyone in his court to assess his new suit anonymously. The response is unanimous: the Emperor is naked. The use of anonymous multi-source feedback provides the Emperor with better information for making a decision about his clothes. Thus, the Emperor, in this updated story, does not go walking around his kingdom wearing only his birthday suit. Like the Emperor, organizations need to improve the quality of decision-making information.
The 360 ̊ feedback assessment model permits organizations to make more informed personnel decisions. This system draws feedback from multiple sources within the decision maker’s ‘circle of influence’ and not just from direct supervisors. Thus, the assessments tend to be more open and honest. Feedback from such sources is generally better than supervisor reviews for assessing employee competencies, specific behaviors and skills, personal strengths and career development areas. A 360 ̊ feedback approach aligns organizational goals to create opportunities for personal and career development. It links individual performance expectations with corporate values.
Traditional Feedback vs. the 360 ̊ Approach
To understand the structural and value differences between traditional feedback and 360 ̊ feedback systems, examine key stakeholders from each type of program. In traditional feedback systems, the key stakeholders are the supervisor and the employee. A 360 ̊ feedback system includes coworkers, team members, external customers, internal customers, direct reports, skip-level reports and others.
360 ̊ feedback also compensates for some deficiencies in today’s corporate organizational structure. Compared to the early 1980’s, organizations today are “flatter,” that is, they have fewer managers and are arranged around self-directed teams. Managers with direct supervisory responsibility now manage many more employees. They supervise employees whose technical or expert knowledge exceeds their own. And, they manage employees organized in project configurations. These scenarios make traditional feedback more difficult today.
Changes in organizational structure, culture and employee relations have led to an increase in the use of 360 ̊ feedback methods. It is now used to achieve corporate management objectives, including participation leadership, empowerment, customer service, quality focus, re-engineering, competency-based rewards and team-based rewards. This system can help achieve other personnel objectives, such as: career development, fair reward decisions, accurate and valid performance measures, non-performance measures, diversity management and legal protection.
How Organizations Use Feedback
360 ̊ feedback systems are instituted to measure personnel development and performance. Development feedback is instituted because it can facilitate an employee’s development within an organization. It permits co-workers to give an employee a confidential assessment that otherwise might never be articulated. This feedback is always confidential and is not shared with the supervisor. Co-worker feedback is never used in making pay or promotion decisions. Firms also use a 360 ̊ feedback process for performance coaching and organizational intelligence.
One 360 ̊ feedback system is the “Team Evaluation and Management Systems Model” (TEAMS). This program includes development and performance information. It helps companies get feedback from a competency-based pay structure by evaluating employees’ work accomplishments and methods. TEAMS is a proprietary program developed and owned by the authors.
Implementing 360 ̊ Feedback
A 360 ̊ feedback project has three phases. Phase I is Process Design, which requires some advance preparation. Phase II is Process Implementation and Phase III is Process Evaluation.
Phase 1: Process Design
For the system to succeed, you must accomplish several steps before initiating Phase I. The most important step is securing leadership support for this process. Support can come from senior management or a change agent within the organization. Ideally, the leadership team will include people from several departments.
After securing the top management’s support, be sure your organization is ready for a feedback process. One symptom is general dissatisfaction with established performance measures. This even helps the feedback process succeed. The leadership team selects a design team of six to fifteen members to assess readiness. If the assessment is favorable, then the design team identifies the process objectives. Finally, the leaders write a promotional plan to tell employees about the program.
Process design consists of selecting an application and developing a competency-based survey. The application selection is driven by the organization’s goals. Generally, organizational leaders want the process to give them either strategic or performance applications. The survey instrument should identify employee and organizational competencies. Developing this instrument is the most difficult part of the process. [Charts in the book offer guidance for assessing readiness and for creating a survey instrument.]
Phase II: Process Implementation
This phase consists of six steps:
- Select evaluation teams of six or fewer members based on policy, trust and credibility concerns.
- Conduct training, level one, to provide instruction on giving feedback to others.
- Conduct the evaluations, using professional methods to gather the desired information.
- Score and report the results, using both internal and external scoring. Software can facilitate this process, as can score range reporting.
- Conduct training, level two, to instruct managers and employees on how to receive feedback.
- Create action plans to highlight areas of personal improvement, areas of strength and areas for development. Action plans might also cover career development, life long learning and professional development.
Phase III: Process Evaluation
This phase also consists of analyzing safeguards and conducting user assessment. Safeguard reports involve computerized statistical analysis of the survey instrument. An analysis of a successful project will give high marks to both item reliability and respondent type. Your company then can conduct an assessment through user satisfaction surveys. Information gathered from this step is used to refine the process.
User Concerns and Needs
The 360 ̊ feedback process has several common pitfalls. The first occurs when companies misapply old knowledge. Users mistakenly try to force the multi-source model to comply with their existing assessment model. Statistical validity makes this impossible. The multi-source survey’s sample size is much smaller and does not conform to traditional survey sample size validity.
Companies make mistakes in this process when they rely too much on technology, substitute labor for technology or use “homegrown” technology. Over-reliance on technology is a problem when companies use adequate technology in the feedback process, but don’t provide enough internal support systems to manage the rest of the process. Substituting labor for technology is the opposite problem, which occurs when the organization tries to use personnel in place of technology. Without appropriate software, the feedback process is too labor intensive for most organizations. When organizations believe they can effectively develop their own software for this process, they may hit snags they could possibly prevent by purchasing the licensed applications [offered by the authors].
Administrative overhead is often a pitfall. Organizations tend to underestimate the total cost of this process. An organization needs a process administrator, a clerical person and an area coordinator to conduct this process successfully. Culture shock and autocracy also inhibit implementation. Senior managers generally do not embrace change because it can dilute their power. Fear of the unknown is an equally powerful pitfall. Employees whose positions depend on cronyism, nepotism or coasting have reasons to inhibit the process.
Day to day pitfalls can derail the process, including supervisor inaction and confidentiality issues. Organizations which allow managers to ignore the process, fail to train participants or breach confidentiality, are all at risk for process failure. Finally, organizations that misapply 360 ̊ feedback risk undermining employee confidence in the process. Misapplications include directing feedback at selective targets, or using it for discipline, discharge and work force reduction.
When users criticize the process, they cite value and cost concerns. Value criticisms range from the general (How do you know the 360 ̊ feedback improves productivity?) to the specific (What do you do if someone receives negative feedback and refuses to change?). In response to these concerns, a quote is given from Pat Riley, the famous basketball coach: “Professional athletes are not highly motivated by the coach alone. In fact, they are tough to motivate because they are paid so handsomely. But when they receive feedback from their teammates on their hustle factor – their effort demonstrated on a basketball floor – they are motivated to hustle, recovering loose balls and playing aggressive defense.”
The Promise and the Future of 360 ̊ Feedback
Research shows employees prefer feedback from additional sources beyond their immediate supervisor. Employees also see multi-source feedback as fairer than single source feedback. These employee preferences and perceptions lend credence to an organization’s use of a 360 ̊ feedback process to adapt personnel management policies and increase productivity.
Because a 360 ̊ feedback approach uses information technology to produce reports, it can become the central element for the development of intelligent systems (also known as learning models). These systems can be designed to identify effective performance practices. This design flexibility makes the 360 ̊ feedback system valuable today and in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment