The use of 360 degree feedback to aid an individuals development is well established; however, to what degree can it be used to 'develop' a team, department or even a whole organisation?

If we consider that the purpose of 360 feedback is to bring about a sustained improvement in those behaviours deemed important to the organisation, and that those behaviours are partly derived from the desired organisational values, then it is possible that cultural change can occur.

Values driven behaviours, which are assessed through 360 degree appraisal, provide a method whereby those behaviours are consistently in view, talked about, and provide the basis for personal development plans.

Ultimately, it is this continuous holding to account of individuals to these behaviours which can help shift the organisation.

Mission, Vision and Values statements are not enough; they need to come alive through day-to-day application.

John

Following the success of previous live events and webcasts, we are pleased to announce a new webinar for September which will be a help any HR professionals out there who may be planning to introduce or revise their performance appraisal process:

Details

We completed a recent project with the British Museum which provides a great example of how a well designed performance appraisal form can really help engage people in the appraisal process and increase completion rates significantly.

The British Museum were looking to increase the quality of information provided through their performance appraisal system.

They also sought to achieve a cultural shift which would re-position performance appraisal at the heart of the Museum’s operation and which would be evidenced by an increased participation rate. 

A unique organisation, with a wide range of employees including world experts in their field: customer service staff, curators, and project managers; the British Museum were looking for an organisation which could support them in their redesign of the appraisal form and stay with them should they then look to implement an online system in the future.

A British Museum owned process, supported by Bowland Solutions, featured the following stages:

 

·         Identification of aims and value of the performance appraisal process

·         Options for form redesign

·         Workshops for 60 people from across the organisation to give feedback on 
    the aims and form options

·         Development of a revised form

·         Workshops to test the revised form and agree on communication

·         Communication, education and roll-out

The revised form, with clear simple language and revised branding was highly tailored to the stated aims and needs of the organisation.  A common form was implemented across the organisation but with bespoke advice based on the job groupings.

Together with a series of presentations, workshops and guidance notes the revised process was rolled out to circa 1,000 staff in March of this year.

The result – the completion rate has risen from 49% (in a year) to 78% (in three months); people are engaging with the process and the data contained within the forms is clearer.

John

We were delighted to run this session for the third time on Wednesday; thanks again for all those who attended and expressed an interest in our thoughts on 360 feedback.

As ever, we are really interested to understand how people are using 360 degree appraisal in their organisations, their good and not so good experiences, and their desire to conduct the process again with a keen eye on 'best practice'.

The session provided ample opportunity for attendees to discuss their experiences within groups, as well as exploring a 'real' 360 degree feedback report which highlighted the need to ensure the face-to-face debrief with a recipient was well prepared for.

Some questions raised and answered were, 'What sort of rating scale should I use?', 'How can ensure recipients don't just select their friends as respondents?, and 'When is the best time to share the report?'.

It was very enjoyable and interesting to have proper debate around the different schools of thought and approaches; 360 degree feedback practice, as with many things, is a broad church and pragmatism should help rule the day.

We will be running a session again later in the Autumn; please contact us if interested in attending, and we look forward to seeing some more of you in due course.

John

I recently attended the Association of Coaching conference on this topic and was pleased to see a recurrent theme emerge which made the link between 360 degree feedback and elite performance, particularly with regard to people in senior leadership roles.

One of the 'bedrocks' of elite performance was self-awareness; a recognition of ones own strengths and 'development opportunities' derived through a 360 degree appraisal process, and coupled with an ability to act upon feedback to improve performance.

As leaders move up the chain of command, the opportunity to obtain this type of invaluable feedback diminishes, but the need for it increases exponentially.

Without it, some leaders remain blissfully unaware of how strengths which helped them ascend have now become liabilities - confidence becomes arrogance and self-esteem becomes narcissism.

360 degree feedback ensures that these 'checks and balances' are in place to harness the strengths of a leader whilst helping them to ensure that they are not overplayed.

John

Please forgive a departure from the normal 360 feedback and performance appraisal posts.

On 24th July, I am setting off to ride from John O'Groats to Lands End.  I will be riding an average of 100 miles a day for the 900 miles of the trip.  I am raising money for Help for Heroes.   If you would like to donate (and give yet further motivation to keep going!) then please visit www.justgiving.com/brendanwalshjogle .

If you can keep from reading blogs on 360 feedback for a while, then I will be keeping a blog of the ride at http://brendanwalshjogle.blogspot.com/

Brendan

Just a reminder for the date of our next seminar entitled "How to successfully implement a 360 degree feedback process within your organisation", on Wednesday 21st July 2010.

This popular seminar is now running for the third time and offers attendees a great opportunity to learn, share best practice, ask questions and network.

By the end of the seminar, you will:

• Understand the critical factors that will ensure success when introducing 360 degree appraisal into your business
• Take away a checklist to help you work logically through the implementation process
• Appreciate the key principles that will help you design a great questionnire, communicate effectively to get company wide 'buy-in' and facilitate face-to-face debriefs.

If you cannot join us for the seminar then please do sign up for the webinar opposite, where we will be sharing the same content.

You can register for either event through the 'Free Stuff' registration form to the right hand side of this blog post or here

We hope to meet and speak with some more of you next month.

John

This isn't a mantra but it is a starting point.  360 degree feedback works best when it is development focused.  When it is assessment based and part of appraisal then you have to be careful that you can get the results you require and that the recipient gets something useful for them.

If your 360 feedback process is development focused then all participants can give feedback openly and straightforwardly safe in the knowledge that the intent is to give the best feedback that will give the recipient most chance to improve.

If the 360 feedback process is appraisal based then all respondents have a filter operating as they complete.  They will generally continue to seek to be fair but the manager and the self responses in particular will be influenced by the appraisal.  Direct reports will be aware of the process and considerate of the impact of positive and negative responses.  None of this precludes using 360 feedback as part of appraisal - many of our clients use it very successfully.  But it does remind you to think it through carefully, get your communication and training right, and build in some failsafes.

Brendan

Quite commonly we are seeing clients wrestle with the relationship between their annual performance appraisal and 360 degree feedback.

Part of the confusion can surround a desire to get feedback from more than one source as part of the performance appraisal process.  Multi-disciplinary teams, virtual teams, matrix management all lead to a correct desire to have more than one manager involved in an appraisal.

The trick for me is to leave 360 degree feedback to be a label applied to something that looks at behaviours and "how" a person is working.  If the desire to get feedback from more than one person is only driven by a desire to get appraisal type information then just get on with it.  If however, you are looking to use 360 feedback as a developmental tool that assists recipients in looking at their behaviour and how they impact others and the results they achieve then linking it to performance appraisal and particularly pay is more challenging. 

My next post will consider this genuine issue but, for now, if all you are looking to do is get appraisal information from more than one source, call it something other than 360 feedback and just do it.

Brendan

I think we're all more receptive to feedback at different times.  360 degree feedback is no different - there are times when the recipient is ready to take on board how others see them and other times when it is less appropriate.  This represents a challenge to HR teams that are looking to implement 360 feedback across a broad population of people.  What to do?

The best practice that we see is to run 360 degree feedback during the following times

• Just prior to training- as part of the package
• As part of a coaching initiative
• At a sensible time in the annual review process (often 6 months either side of the appraisal meeting)
• As part of succession planning / career management.  E.g. during promotion reviews, after 6 months in a new role

You can think of others - the idea is to consider when recipients are most likely to take the 360 degree feedback on board.  Probably when they're not too busy with other things and when they are actively interested in their own development.

Brendan

We are very pleased to announced dates for our latest seminar & webinar entitled "How to successfully implement a 360 degree feedback process within your organisation", on Wednesday 21st July and Thursday 22nd July respectively.

This popular seminar is now running for the third time and offers attendees a great opportunity to learn, share best practice, ask questions and network.

By the end of the seminar, you will:

• Understand the critical factors that will ensure success when introducing 360 degree appraisal into your business
• Take away a checklist to help you work logically through the implementation process
• Appreciate the key principles that will help you design a great questionnire, communicate effectively to get company wide 'buy-in' and facilitate face-to-face debriefs.

If you cannot join us for the seminar then please do sign up for the webinar, where we will be sharing the same content.

You can register for either event through the 'Free Stuff' registration form to the right hand side of this blog post.

We hope to meet and speak with some more of you next month.

John

We often work with our clients in designing their competency frameworks to support a 360 degree feedback process and I have become conscious of some subtle shifts in what is expected of leadership teams in the new, ambiguous and changing world we find ourselves in.

Most notable is a desire for leaders to exhibit resilience, tenacity, an outward looking focus and agility; these underpin an ability to respond and overcome constant challenges, where the answers aren't always readily known and one must make decisions on the information available.

Information abounds, data is all around us, but it is the ability to make sense of this and apply it sensibly that can distinguish 'good' from 'great'.

To this end, I am reminded of a quote which unfortunately I cannot attribute, which states:

"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad"

Let's get 'Wisdom' in the mix with 360 degree appraisal!

John

Picking up on my last post, emphasizing the importance of setting well-formed objectives, it has been interesting to note through our training programmes, just how difficult this step in the performance appraisal cycle proves to be for many line managers.

 

Undertaking a training session on how to set well-formed objectives probably wouldn’t feature highly in most line managers priorities, but we are seeing more and more that this module helps unlock some of the difficulties line managers struggle with further down the line; most notably, giving positive and negative feedback, coaching conversations and critically the end-of-year performance review meeting.

 

One of the key difficulties in setting ‘good’ objectives is a superficial attempt to apply the SMART template; the term is so ubiquitous that the temptation is to run through it without thinking through what it really means.

 

For example, is it ‘R’ for relevant or realistic? If it is realistic, what is the difference between that and achievable? What measures are appropriate? Is it enough to detail the tasks and activities or should the goal be solely outcome oriented?

 

Without this clarity (and practice), what results is a murky version of a SMART goal, which is nebulous and has enough ambiguity to make an honest assessment of performance almost impossible and performance appraisals a challenging task.

 

John

Love them or loathe them? Performance appraisals seem to engender strong feelings in both camps, with firm advocates for structured performance reviews seeing them as a productive and valuable process both for the individual and organisation, and as many seeing them a necessary evil that could be replaced by a blank sheet of paper and a chat.

Such polarity probably represents the very different experiences people have had both as an appraisee and an appraiser; it can go horribly worng, but it can also go spectularly right.

Setting ones own experience to one side and thinking through the purpose of performance appraisals objectively, one should come to the conclusion that an appraisal process, whether it be highly structured or very loose, is useful if it serves to improve the performance of an individual and by implication the organisation.

What we would see as the first critical step in an appraisal process improving performance would be well-formed objectives; SMART or otherwise, objectives are the key - with them, the whole process of performance management has robust foundations, but without them, all subsequent steps in the process such as coaching conversations, giving feedback, and ultimately the performance review, teeter on a house of cards.

John

A quick note to announce some new performance appraisal training programmes that we believe will support our online performance review systems.

Performance Planning
This programme helps Line Managers become skilled in setting well-formed (or SMART) objectives and outcomes for their team; it covers what objectives seek to do, the different types of objectives which suit different job roles, what a well-formed objective looks like and finally how to write and set these in a performance planning meeting at the beginning of the year.

Performance Conversations
This programme helps Line Managers become skilled in handling those all important conversations that should happen all year round; setting some great objectives at the performance planning stage is not enough, what is required is the ability to review and modify objectives throughout the year, offer positive and negative feedback and be able to coach individuals to success.

Performance Appraisals
This programme helps Line Managers tackle the end-of-year appraisal; as an event, it needs to be well prepared for, structured and followed up effectively. Delegates will learn how performance appraisals form part of a wider performance management cycle, core skills required in the appraisal and a logical structure to follow.

If any of these programmes are of interest and you would like to know more then just drop me an email at john@bowlandsolutions.com.

John

How this links to 360 degree feedback will follow!

Let's assume we have a basic traffic light system.  And we find out that we have the following distribution

• Red 50% of the time
• Amber 10% of the time
• Green 40% of the time

And someone wants to know what colour it is on average.  What to do?

Average requires numbers.  

So, let's give Red the number 1, Amber the number 2, and Green the number 3.  A bit of Maths will find the average now (50% *1) + (10% * 2) + (40% *3) ... 1.9 is the answer.

So our average is 1.9 which is nearest to Amber (which we gave the number 2).  So on average the colour of the traffic light is Amber ... somewhere in the middle.

We know this is wrong - the light is on amber least of all - but it was an attractive solution somehow. 

Even more tempting is to ask people to respond to a question with responses that can be

• Strongly Agree
• Agree
• Neither agree nor disagree
• Disagree
• Strongly Disagree

and then give people a score out of 5 for how people answered on average.

Let's say we have done that and the average is 3.1.  What does that mean?  We're going to say that on average the respondents roughly "neither agree nor disagree" with the statement.  But go back to our traffic light example... the colour that the traffic light is least often is amber, what's to say the same hasn't happened here?

Statisticians will tell you that the underlying problem here is that you are treating categorical data as if it is numerical data; if you are very unlucky, you may find yourself in a debate about likert scales and the Polytomouse Rasch model.  What I want to highlight is, this superficially simple concept of giving each point a number and averaging the responses is not that simple and may lead to inaccurate conclusions.

Way's round it?  Either don't use averages in your report, or make it clear that you are using the scale to reflect a mark out of 5.  That at least gives your average credibility even if it doesn't get around the problem of the average obscuring the underlying scoring. 

Note, this doesn't stop you using numbers or charts in your report - I'll discuss that in another post.

This article forms part of the structure of a new white paper I am writing on reporting in 360 degree appraisals (I promise this is the heavily statistical bit and the rest is more down to what we see as best practice!).  If you sign up to our white papers, then you will receive that document as it is completed.  Click here to sign up.



Brendan

Here is a recent blog post I came across recently which lambasts a few management practices, one of these being 360 degree feedback processes.

As with many articles of this nature, I often find myself agreeing with some of what is said; poorly executed management practices, such as a badly implemented 360 degree appraisal process, can do more harm than good - so if people have a 'bad experience', it can colour their view about such practices permanently.

However, as with most things in life, this isn't a 'black & white' situation, and despite their being poor practice in evidence, there is also (certainly in our own experience) very good practice around which suggests that there is a danger of throwing the proverbial 'baby out with the bathwater' as one looks to kick against bad practice.

360 degree feedback should complement the whole myriad of management practices, tools and processes out there - it isn't a complete substitute for open, honest and regular communication between bosses and direct reports, peer to peer, etc,  which should most definitely be encouraged, but it certainly adds value as organisations seek to create this kind of transparent culture which can take time to take root.

John

360 degree feedback deliberately generates data from a range of sources - it creates more data than a standard performance appraisal.  Annual performance appraisals are also starting to commonly seek information from a range of sources - it reflects a move to more networked organisations and less structured boss->subordinate relationships.

That all makes sense to me - it is a sensible growth in data.  But when it comes to the annual performance appraisal working out what is worth measuring is important.  I've been thinking about this a lot as I've been looking recently as my wife develops a new business promoting deals and discounts for days out in the UK.

Her website has Google analytics that tells her how many people visit the site, which pages are popular, etc.  The blog http://blog.topdogdays.com tells her how many people have subscribed to the blog.  Her twitter service http://www.twitter.com/topdogdays tells her how many people are following her.  Amazon tell her how many people have bought a book having visited the site, and google tell her how many people have clicked on an advert on the site.  Data, data, everywhere.  Eventually all of this data can distract from the purpose of the business and managing it.  But it is highly seductive and of course in the early days it is great feedback.

For all of us when reviewing performance - or setting the targets for next year - it is critical to boil down the measures to the key performance indicators.  A term that makes a lot of sense but is often abused.  We need to watch the key performance indicators - not all of them.  In a previous life, I ran a call centre operation.  We had stats coming at us from all directions - all that really mattered was 1) did we answer the calls and 2) did we provide a great service when we did.  Ring time, call duration, "not ready" time, and hundreds of other numbers were indicators but not key indicators.

Brendan

One author wrote that if you want to make performance appraisals really difficult then link the individual's pay to their numerical rating.

Without judgement, we take the position that some organisations wish to use the performance appraisal process to help them determine the level of renumeration – salary or bonus – of individuals. If that is the  case, then how should the performance appraisal process be run to best achieve this?

First, let us consider what is a good outcome. We would argue that a good outcome for the advocates of performance related pay is

• Individuals motivated to achieve targets that will improve the organisation and meet the organisational strategy.
• The correct people getting the correct rewards
• An efficient performance review process that delivers the benefits without using those benefits up in administrative burden
• A robust process that stands scrutiny from external parties particularly on equality

When you consider the list above you are immediately struck by the need to get the start right. It is not so much the system of calculating rewards that matters – more it is a matter of ensuring that the measures are generated well. Better that our grading structure is simplistic than we skip past the step of generating fair targets.

So, first and foremost if you are looking to implement performance related pay and are using performance appraisals to support that implementation – spend a lot of time thinking about how to get the measure right. Continuing our humble theme of not knowing what is right for you, let us describe some options that we have seen work.

• Weighted objectives, agreed between manager and employee and cascaded from the organisational strategy and graded for achievement.
• Value statements derived from the company values and graded for compliance.
• KPI indicators developed in consultation with employees
• Monthly targets, adjusted each month against which employees are graded/scored each month
• Team/Organisation objectives against which whole team's are measured
• Survey based data – e.g. customer satisfaction scores, against which individuals and teams are reviewed

Before embarking on performance related pay we would advocate a thorough consideration of what you are looking to achieve.  If you decide that it is right for your organisation then I hope you find this note useful as a first step to delivering a robust process.


Brendan