I've recently been talking to a company that wants to use 360 Degree Feedback as part of its appraisal and performance review toolkit. Unusually, this company wants its 360 Degree Feedback process and reporting to identify individuals' scores and comments on their colleagues. By doing this they feel that respondents will:
- Reflect very carefully on the feedback they give
- Be prepared and able to justify the feedback
- Be able to provide very specific examples to back up their scores.
In an ideal organisation, we would all be happy to provide open and honest feedback to our colleagues, back it up, and be prepared to discuss it with them in a positive and constructive way.
Equally we would all be professional enough to appreciate feedback from our colleagues and wouldn't allow our working relationships to be affected by any less-than-great feedback. Unfortunately not many of us work in an ideal organisation!
Most companies tend to prefer to err on the side of caution by making their 360 Degree Feedback process anonymous, and by going to great lengths to avoid respondents being identified in any way. This is undoubtedly the safer option, and probably the one we would recommend in most cases.
The "Open" 360 Degree Feedback model would only work in an organisation which is culturally very open, where constant feedback is the norm, and when the business is doing very well and everyone is sharing in that success.
If you have any experience of Open 360 Degree Feedback we'd love to hear from you.