The first concern most people have when asked to participate in 360-degree feedback is, “Who will see the results?” To expect people to give honest feedback, participants must trust the process and believe that the feedback will be confidential.
Development or appraisal. 360-degree feedback was designed for individual development. The best approach is to distance the process from performance appraisal, compensation or personnel action. If your goal is honest, realistic feedback to inform developmental planning, then be certain only the person being assessed receives detailed information. Individuals can use this in-depth information to create a development plan. This plan, possibly with summary feedback data, may be shared with a boss, coach or team.
It’s generally not a good idea to use 360 feedback for formal performance appraisal. If you must, think of 360 as data to inform the future, not the past. 360 can be used to help people develop goals in preparation for the performance review. It’s critical that the behaviors being assessed are necessary to success on the job. Give detailed reports to rated individuals and broad summary reports to the rated individual’s boss or coach.
The key is trust and communication. No matter who you decide will see the results, be sure everyone knows up front what the intentions for distribution are. Get agreement in advance. If anyone but the rated individual gets any part of the data, explain why and show how it will be used. When conducting pre-assessment briefings with respondents and feedback recipients, show samples of all the reports you intend to produce and state who will see each report. Then make sure there are no surprises! If trust in the organization is low, consider using a trustee to control the printing and distribution of reports.
The case for confidentiality. Taking extra precautions to ensure confidentiality is worth the effort, because respondents will be more honest. If you don’t expect to get significantly honest feedback, why conduct the assessment in the first place? Confidentiality also protects against recriminations should the recipient not like the feedback and search for someone to blame.
360-degree feedback as a needs assessment tool. Aggregated group summary reports can identify training needs for the group and help allocate training resources. If you’ve taken care to define assessment categories through well-designed behavioral statements, the results will be extremely valuable to a training department or team leader. For self-directed work teams, the group summary can be used as a team development tool through a process of dialogue and action planning. Once again, be sure everyone understands how these reports will be used before the process begins. Show sample reports and get
