Two unrelated issues that are often confused – confidentiality of your report and anonymity of responses.

Let’s take confidentiality of the report. 

Up front – before the 360 feedback process is even started – you should be clear on who gets access to a 360 degree feedback report.  The manager?  HR?  The department director?  As long as it is clear and as long as it is restricted to those people that the recipients and respondents see as having valid  reason for using the report then all will be fine.  Most of our 360 feedback reports are in a work context and so we would expect as a minimum that the line manager would have access to the report.

Now anonymity of responses. 

I would say that in an ideal world there should be no need for anonymous responses.  360 feedback should not be seen as a way of saying to people something that you would not have said to them directly.  Rather it is an effective method of gathering feedback from a range of people and presenting that feedback in an aggregated manner.

But, 360 degree feedback is also often used as a method of getting feedback that the organisation has not seen as forthcoming and fear would not be forthcoming if anonymity of feedback were not guaranteed.  This is very common – indeed it is the norm – but I suggest that anyone starting 360 degree feedback or renewing a process at least considers whether anonymity is required. 


Brendan