Panoramic overview: How to evaluate employee performance
Most often, when companies evaluate employees, this implies feedback only from the immediate supervisor. This helps to understand how well an employee works, but such an assessment is often biased. If the goal is broader - to help a person better understand their strengths and weaknesses and determine the direction for their further development, then feedback will be useful from everyone with whom the employee regularly communicates on work.
This was the reason for the search for more versatile approaches, and as a solution, the “ 360 degree method ” appeared. It involves collecting feedback from the whole environment of a person or a working group. The method was invented 19 years ago and is a periodic collection of evaluations from managers, subordinates, and colleagues. A few years ago, we started using it in Wrike to give feedback to managers, team leaders and product managers to determine directions for personal development. Also, the 360 ​​degree method helps to improve collaboration in teams, where many new employees have arrived, or where potential conflicts are possible.
This method of evaluation is interesting because it also focuses on a person’s business and personal qualities, which determine how well a person is able to work in a team, whether he can be a leader and build successful relationships with colleagues and clients.
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The 360 ​​degree method helps to determine:
An interesting feature of the method is that it is not an objective assessment of professionalism, but primarily a tool for the development and research of teamwork. Colleagues' feedback is subjective by definition, so it should not affect wage decisions and promotions. Rather, it is an operational opportunity to identify problem areas in joint work, resolve emerging conflicts and work on the development of certain qualities.
Like any other tool, the 360 ​​degree method has its limitations and needs to be applied correctly. Perhaps the main factor that determines the success of the program is whether the organizers of the survey can clearly convey its meaning and rules of participation to the employees. Below are a few key points that you should pay attention to before starting the assessment program to get a result that is applicable in future workflows.
Often the HR-department becomes the only interested party in the survey. If the program participants do not explain its meaning and do not embed it in the workflow, then it is likely that they will receive formal answers or not receive them at all. To do this, employees should perceive the survey as a working tool for an objective assessment of their qualities and resolution of difficulties in interaction and see that the survey results are consistently applied in practice.
The questions should not be too general (“How do you rate the employee’s work?”), Nor too personal (“What associations do you have this employee?”). Although such questions will help to better understand informal relationships in a team, they are unlikely to lead to practical actions to improve interaction. Questions that can help you get constructive feedback could be: “How open is this person to new ideas?”, “In the event of a problem, is it limited to its elimination or does it analyze the causes?”, “What does this employee do? okay? ”What should he do more? What should be avoided? ”. There should not be too many questions, so that filling in the survey takes no more than 20 minutes of working time.
The optimal survey structure to which we arrived at Wrike is a list of questions about the qualities of an employee with a rating scale, each of which should be left with a comment with an example, plus a few open questions at the end. This combination makes it possible to obtain both quantitative and qualitative information simultaneously. Specific examples of interaction allow us to develop recommendations for changing the situation.
Often, the results of such surveys focus only on weaknesses that need to be worked on, and this imbalance should be taken into account at the question formulation stage. You must include at least one or two questions about the strengths of the employee. Also, survey participants should understand how constructive criticism differs from non-constructive (constructive follow specific recommendations for changing the situation) and refrain from personal remarks to the employee. Feedback on successes will give the employee more confidence in those issues where he is truly competent, and in combination with constructive criticism will give a more objective picture of development opportunities.
When people take part in a survey for the first time, it is necessary to convince them that all answers will be completely anonymous and will not affect the assessment of their work. In some Western companies, there is a practice of attracting third-party consultants to conduct such surveys and implement recommendations based on its results, since the level of trust in them is higher than to employees of internal HR departments. In Russia, few companies can afford this, so the HR specialist who supervises the program should ensure confidentiality at the proper level.
By default, only the person and his manager will know about the results of the survey. They conduct a one-on-one discussion on its results and determine further actions. There is a conflict or many problems have been identified. You can bring an employee to the HR department. The success of the application of the method plays a big role in the trust of the team to its leader and the HR team, who must adequately respond to conflicts and negative feedback. After seeing an inadequate response, employees simply stop leaving honest feedback.
Most companies forget about the program at the stage of implementing recommendations and therefore do not get the desired effect. Changes in people's behavior usually require time and regular reinforcement. Method 360 assumes at least a two-year cycle, during which both the employee and his manager return several times to the survey results and received recommendations and monitor their progress (it is recommended to do this once a quarter). You also need to repeat the survey at least once a year, and ideally every six months, to see how the feedback from the team has changed. A single survey may have a small effect, but will not lead to a stable improvement in team relations. In the case of regular surveys, it is worth considering the appropriate tools that would save time and effort in collecting and processing responses. It is hardly reasonable to spend the time of the HR department to print out the questionnaires and decipher the results in a regular manner. The best option is any cloud solution for conducting surveys such as SurveyMonkey, which allows you to quickly aggregate responses.
In conclusion, it is worth noting that the 360-degree method does not replace traditional ways of evaluating professional activity, which are capable of influencing career changes, but rather works in parallel with them. His results will be of interest primarily to the employee himself, the HR department and the timlids, aimed at the personal development of the team members, and the immediate supervisor can still assess the professional competence of his subordinates with his usual tools.
This was the reason for the search for more versatile approaches, and as a solution, the “ 360 degree method ” appeared. It involves collecting feedback from the whole environment of a person or a working group. The method was invented 19 years ago and is a periodic collection of evaluations from managers, subordinates, and colleagues. A few years ago, we started using it in Wrike to give feedback to managers, team leaders and product managers to determine directions for personal development. Also, the 360 ​​degree method helps to improve collaboration in teams, where many new employees have arrived, or where potential conflicts are possible.
This method of evaluation is interesting because it also focuses on a person’s business and personal qualities, which determine how well a person is able to work in a team, whether he can be a leader and build successful relationships with colleagues and clients.
')
The 360 ​​degree method helps to determine:
- “Blind spots” in collaboration with colleagues,
- contribution to the common cause, which often goes unnoticed,
- new qualities that need to develop employee.
An interesting feature of the method is that it is not an objective assessment of professionalism, but primarily a tool for the development and research of teamwork. Colleagues' feedback is subjective by definition, so it should not affect wage decisions and promotions. Rather, it is an operational opportunity to identify problem areas in joint work, resolve emerging conflicts and work on the development of certain qualities.
Like any other tool, the 360 ​​degree method has its limitations and needs to be applied correctly. Perhaps the main factor that determines the success of the program is whether the organizers of the survey can clearly convey its meaning and rules of participation to the employees. Below are a few key points that you should pay attention to before starting the assessment program to get a result that is applicable in future workflows.
Interest of participants
Often the HR-department becomes the only interested party in the survey. If the program participants do not explain its meaning and do not embed it in the workflow, then it is likely that they will receive formal answers or not receive them at all. To do this, employees should perceive the survey as a working tool for an objective assessment of their qualities and resolution of difficulties in interaction and see that the survey results are consistently applied in practice.
Correctly composed questions
The questions should not be too general (“How do you rate the employee’s work?”), Nor too personal (“What associations do you have this employee?”). Although such questions will help to better understand informal relationships in a team, they are unlikely to lead to practical actions to improve interaction. Questions that can help you get constructive feedback could be: “How open is this person to new ideas?”, “In the event of a problem, is it limited to its elimination or does it analyze the causes?”, “What does this employee do? okay? ”What should he do more? What should be avoided? ”. There should not be too many questions, so that filling in the survey takes no more than 20 minutes of working time.
The optimal survey structure to which we arrived at Wrike is a list of questions about the qualities of an employee with a rating scale, each of which should be left with a comment with an example, plus a few open questions at the end. This combination makes it possible to obtain both quantitative and qualitative information simultaneously. Specific examples of interaction allow us to develop recommendations for changing the situation.
Balance between positive and negative feedback
Often, the results of such surveys focus only on weaknesses that need to be worked on, and this imbalance should be taken into account at the question formulation stage. You must include at least one or two questions about the strengths of the employee. Also, survey participants should understand how constructive criticism differs from non-constructive (constructive follow specific recommendations for changing the situation) and refrain from personal remarks to the employee. Feedback on successes will give the employee more confidence in those issues where he is truly competent, and in combination with constructive criticism will give a more objective picture of development opportunities.
Confidentiality
When people take part in a survey for the first time, it is necessary to convince them that all answers will be completely anonymous and will not affect the assessment of their work. In some Western companies, there is a practice of attracting third-party consultants to conduct such surveys and implement recommendations based on its results, since the level of trust in them is higher than to employees of internal HR departments. In Russia, few companies can afford this, so the HR specialist who supervises the program should ensure confidentiality at the proper level.
By default, only the person and his manager will know about the results of the survey. They conduct a one-on-one discussion on its results and determine further actions. There is a conflict or many problems have been identified. You can bring an employee to the HR department. The success of the application of the method plays a big role in the trust of the team to its leader and the HR team, who must adequately respond to conflicts and negative feedback. After seeing an inadequate response, employees simply stop leaving honest feedback.
Systematic and work on the results
Most companies forget about the program at the stage of implementing recommendations and therefore do not get the desired effect. Changes in people's behavior usually require time and regular reinforcement. Method 360 assumes at least a two-year cycle, during which both the employee and his manager return several times to the survey results and received recommendations and monitor their progress (it is recommended to do this once a quarter). You also need to repeat the survey at least once a year, and ideally every six months, to see how the feedback from the team has changed. A single survey may have a small effect, but will not lead to a stable improvement in team relations. In the case of regular surveys, it is worth considering the appropriate tools that would save time and effort in collecting and processing responses. It is hardly reasonable to spend the time of the HR department to print out the questionnaires and decipher the results in a regular manner. The best option is any cloud solution for conducting surveys such as SurveyMonkey, which allows you to quickly aggregate responses.
In conclusion, it is worth noting that the 360-degree method does not replace traditional ways of evaluating professional activity, which are capable of influencing career changes, but rather works in parallel with them. His results will be of interest primarily to the employee himself, the HR department and the timlids, aimed at the personal development of the team members, and the immediate supervisor can still assess the professional competence of his subordinates with his usual tools.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/309438/
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