360 Degree Feedback and Appraisal - By: Christopher Creswick

Collecting response for presentation evaluation or analyzing the importance of a worker or employees is vital for any human resource department. Without collecting appropriate data regarding an employee’s performance and the advantage he gives to the corporation, future actions cannot be developed to utmost effect. Thus, different organizations collect said data in differing ways depending on their needs.

360-degree feedback; also known as multisource assessment or multi-rater feedback, is a systematic approach directed at gathering overall response for an employee. The ‘360’ is a reference to the 360 degrees of a circle, with the aid worker being considered as the hub of the circle. It involves acquiring feedback from the individual himself as self-assessment, and from his underlings, colleagues, and managers or supervisors, as well as outer contacts effected by his work such as customers, clients and stakeholders. Sometimes, the process is made easy and personnel are either only directly reviewed by their bosses in a conventional way of performance evaluation, or through upward feedback in which managers get feedback by their direct reports.

The first uses of 360-degree feedback are evident in the Second World War, when the German Army began to assess performance by acquiring feedback from various sources. One of the preliminary archived need of surveys for collecting information regarding employees dates back to the 1950s. Right after, the concept of 360-degree feedback instantly escalated as a method for performance evaluation. Nonetheless, it wasn’t till the 1990s that it was widely understood and implemented by the mass of human resource divisions worldwide and its contemporary face perfected. This was because manually gathering, managing and analyzing the data collected was an extremely time-consuming task and needed much attempt on the practitioners’ part, until the process was automatic with the advent of computers and necessitated minimal input on the practitioners’ end.

The consequences obtained from carrying out the practice of multisource feedback permits firms and organizations to defensively plan the development and training necessary for an individual’s growth, with respect to the benefit they will provide to the company. Certain administrative actions and decisions; such as an employee’s pay or his standing in a company’s hierarchy to promote or demote said individual, are also influenced by the feedback collected. In such cases, the overall assessment is more for assessment purposes and is therefore called a ‘360-degree review’. There exists a difference of opinion concerning multisource feedback’s use; and potential, as a source for collecting data for evaluation purposes, or if it should be used solely for development purposes as it’s not a viable and accurate medium of feedback for appraisal purposes.

Many researches and studies into the results; and the accuracy of these results, of 360-degree feedback have yielded decisive conclusions. The numerous studies carried out highlight that 360-degree feedback results in an overall enhancement in a workforce’s workings almost always over a period of three to five years, if not immediately. The study regarding the accuracy of the feedback prove that the relation between the person conducting the 360-degree feedback and the individual being assessed; as in the period of time both have known each other, has the most significant impact on the accuracy of the results obtained.

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