Organizations use different methods to evaluate the individual performance of employees and create new effective programs for training and personal development. 360-degree feedback, peer-review, can be used as a key method of individual performance evaluation as it covers all important points of performance from broad environment. The four important steps are self-evaluation, peer review, direct reports and manager’s evaluation. Despite this opportunity, managers still have a long way to go in all parts of the organization. The role of 360-degree feedback may prove important.
360-degree feedback allows management to evaluate and analyze positive and negative factors of work, culture and motivation of an employee. Previously, managers cannot expect meaningful feedback. Organizations just have an appraisal process but it was very constricted (Baron and Kreps 1999). As part of the cultural initiative modern organizations have an opportunity to introduce 360-degree feedback, but, more significantly, management and performance evaluation is structured around the values. Employees are now being evaluated by supervisors, peers, and subordinates on whether they are demonstrating the principles in their daily practices. Initially, employees were very doubtful and uncertain to engage in the process. Most of the employees did not trust the evaluation process as it was anonymous and there was cynicism about whether it would really result in pheromone improvement (Armstrong and Baron 32).
In spite of cultural and religious differences, 360-degree feedback is very effective as it involves independent sources of evaluation and provides a manager with overall analysis of the performance. 360-degree feedback to the employees on their job performance can have a important outcome, but much depends on such issues as the nature of the comment, who or what provides the opinion, and the receptivity of the employee (Simon 2007). During the employee’s evaluation, managers should place heavy trust on feedback to help the employee’s learning–and justifiably so. If the, 360-degree feedback is received from the task, an obligation is that the employee believes that it is in response to his or her own practices and behavior and does not represent the effect of what his peers do. 360-degree feedback from self may vary in regard to knowledge, which in turn may vary with professionalism or age. It would clearly be risky to allow employees to serve as their own main source of feedback if they lacked experience. Interfering practices between response and delayed feedback–highly likely in a work environment–can adversely affect improvements (Baron and Kreps 1999).
The problem for the manager is more difficult when team performance is poor and negative feedback is given. In such situations, 360-degree feedback should be given to the team as a whole. This will lead to the situation when the team members respond to feedback in terms of commitment to team goals, interest in the team task, or attraction to the team. There can be one member in a team to whom people never gave feedback. Having these employees share their feedback and ask their peers for help in living the values is a dramatic event for the team (Armstrong and Baron 32).
In sum, 360-degree feedback is the most effective tool of modern management as it allows managers to save time and resources usually spent on information gathering and investigations. In a practical sense, a manager will not be not greatly concerned about feedback if the team performance is good, although attributing team outcomes to the acts of individual employees, so important to learning, may be difficult to pin down or measure and may therefore be largely ignored and individual motivation may suffer greatly.
References
Armstrong M., Baron A. (eds.) (2002). The job evaluation handbook. Eds. Institute of Personnel and Development.
Baron, J., Kreps, K. (1999). Strategic Human Resources; Frameworks for General Managers. Wiley; 1 edition.
Simon, H.A. (2007). Administrative Behavior, 4th Edition. Free Press; 4 Sub edition.