360° Performance Appraisal - CoAction Specialty

Typically, once a year (or more often) managers hold a meeting with their employees to discuss their performance over the past year, and create some goals for the following year.

In many standard performance appraisals managers will collect information on the performance of the employee and compare that to the opinion of the employee on how their performance has been.

Another form of a performance appraisal is called a 360° Performance Appraisal. This type of performance appraisal allows the opinions of many other people to be added to the discussion between the manager and the employee.

Managers will typically send out a questionnaire to various people in the organization to complete. The people that are chosen to complete the questionnaire normally are:

The employee being evaluated

The manager giving the evaluation
Employees with a similar job to the employee being evaluated
Employees that are managed by the employee being evaluated
Employees that interact consistently with the employee being evaluated

When the questionnaires are completed comparisons can be made between the opinions of all the employees who completed the questionnaire.

This gives the employee being evaluated and the manager a complete perspective of the performance of that employee. This all-around perspective is called a 360-degree appraisal.

Some issues with this process can include:

Some employees may be unwilling to offer an opinion for fear of retribution
Others may be more than willing to only offer destructive comments
Four rules to follow when using a 360-degree appraisal process:
Design the questionnaire to be easily understood
Tell the employees filling out the questionnaire what it is being used for
Keep the process confidential, so opinions can be given without fear