3 Tips to Share with Your Employees for 360-Degree Review

Using 360-degree reviews in your performance management plan can add many benefits to your workforce, one being well-rounded feedback for employees and managers. Implementing a review based system is more important than you think, as 74% of Millennials feel “in the dark” about how their managers and peers think they’re performing.

Presenting performance feedback from managers to employees isn’t always enough; often, employees also need to understand how their position is perceived by others. In this case, how can you make sure your team handles 360-degree feedback in the best way possible? Set them up with these tips:

Acknowledgement and Acceptance

Let employees know that the 360-degree review is a positive step, and not personal. Combing through a pile of comments and opinions about work can be overwhelming, but it’s important to keep emotions in check and know that 360-degree feedback is given to help and improve, not tear down. Of course, you can only let your employees know this if you’ve properly trained them on how to give feedback.

In an ideal situation, all of the feedback that an employee would receive would be actionable, but reviews can contradict one another. Let employees know, even if they feel like feedback may be unfair, to simply just take note of what is said and move on to the next step. Prepare workers for any feedback they feel is unfair.

For example, a workaholic project manager may feel she is going to get stellar feedback from everyone on her team because she’s constantly saving their projects or helping them hit a deadline, but when she receives feedback from her team that she’s bossy, it may surprise her. This can be interpreted as “deep investment in her work” and help her learn to be a better leader by “taking a step back when others are in charge”.

Try this: Have employees jot down the bare-bones interpretation of each piece of feedback they receive in the review. Create one column for feedback and one column for solutions or learnings.

Read how some employees can struggle with 360-degree reviews and how to fix it.

Look for a Pattern

As your team receives their 360-degree reviews, it’s important to recognize what is being said over and over again by different sources. Albeit, this may be easier said than done as different feedback sources have a unique way of relaying information.

For example, an employee’s peer may say they are able to always jump in when needed the most, but a superior may word this skill as prioritizing tasks well. Training employees to recognize these patterns in feedback will give them the ability to understand the 360-degree feedback and will be able to develop their skills more.

Try this: Encourage employees to take the bare-bones interpretations they wrote down from the acknowledgement step and sort them out into categories so they are able to see what feedback is related to which.

Learn the key to successful performance management.

Set Up a Plan

Now it’s time for your employees to take their 360-degree reviews to the next level. Encourage your team to gather the information they’ve received from these reviews to set up a personal development plan.

By using the bare-bones interpretations and sorting them into categories, they will be able to figure out what is, and is not, working for them. If they are receiving a consistent amount of feedback letting them know their prioritizing skills are on par, it may be time to ask themselves how they can then develop that aspect of their performance further. On the other hand, if much of their constructive criticism is pointing in the same direction then coming up with a plan to get on track in that area is crucial.

Try this: Have employees take the categories they sorted feedback into and decipher whether it was negative or positive then have themselves questions like “How can I be better in this area?” or “How can I develop this skill to benefit my career path?” Have them jot down these solutions or learnings next to the feedback and encourage them to save these journals for review.

Read how to turn your awesome employees into phenomenal leaders.

Ensuring your employees have a feedback system that works is as vital to their development as it is to your organization since organizations where recognition occurs have 14% better employee engagement, productivity, and customer service than those without. Empowering employees to find their own solutions to issues or their own succession paths to greater heights is crucial to their professional development.
Set your employees up for success after receiving feedback with these 3 tips and you’ll be sure to see these results as well. Want to join in on the conversation? Find us on Twitter! @trakstar_hr