I've heard it said so many times that nature is the best designer, there's something to be said for survival of the fittest. Natures designs that surround us are only there having fought off many other designs to be the best, granted there has been some evolution along the way.

I'm looking into the usability of our 360 degree appraisal and performance review tools and considering where our products need to evolve in order to meet the growing needs of our users, however, I'm now keeping in mind that some of our features have been around in some form or another since the beginning and have stood the test of time. So, maybe those features deserve to remain, albeit after some evolution of their own.

What are your thoughts? Are there features you just can't live without, features that are great, if only they had a little bit extra? Let us know!

David

Hearing somebody speak passionately about a subject can be so inspiring, regardless of the subject. Sometimes, however the subject is of importance and can have rather impressive side effects.

Bowland Solutions believes (passionately) in the value of quality feedback and it is this passion that has inspired the development of our performance review and 360 degree appraisal tools to capture this feedback and deliver it out in the best way possible.

Now, those of us of a geeky disposition are passionate about the software we produce, but we feed off this passion to both produce annual performance review tools that we are proud of and create the best environment possible for delivering quality feedback.

Our passion doesn't stop there though! People who believe in what they are doing inspire others, just as I have been inspired and hopefully, those administering the process are inspired by the tools they are using to deliver it into the organisation. People feed off this and, when driven with vigour, we see greater completion rates and I would hazard a guess that the quality of the feedback is improved also!

I guess I'm going to spend some time thinking about how we can make our tools more inspirational...not a small task I would think!

David

A recent post on the signal vs noise blog grabbed my attention stating that the CEO would be "standing by" to take calls, emails etc between given times on given days. Firstly, a bold and brave move with clear benefits to the customer, but later I started to wonder what is the benefit to the CEO. The answer is quality 360 feedback.

People often talk of exchanging job roles for a day to experience life on the other side of the fence, but this can often be inpractical. A 360 degree appraisal just might be the answer!

I'm very eager to gain feedback from the users of our system, the recipients, respondents and also the administrators.

More on this soon...

I have recently been investigating the functionality of our online 360 degree appraisal and performance review tools. We're looking into ways in which we can improve the overall process. This led me to question "What are we trying to do?".

At Bowland Solutions, we live and breathe annual performance reviews and 360 degree feedback, all day, every day. It would be wrong to think that most of our users do the same, though it can be all too easy to forget this. For the average user,  the quality is not in the system, but in the feedback they receive. So, to answer my own question, the goal of our online feedback tools is to get out of the way and allow the users to leave quality feedback unhindered and deliver this feedback to the recipient in a clear, concise manner.

With that in mind, maybe the question itself is wrong? Maybe it should be "What are we trying not to do?".

I'll keep you posted on my research in this area, but if you have any ideas or feature requests for either our 360 feedback or performance appraisal tools then feel free to drop us an email, we really do value the feedback!

David