How can you improve 360-degree feedback surveys?

1 Define the purpose and goals

Before you design and implement a 360-degree feedback survey, you need to have a clear purpose and goal for the process. What are you trying to achieve with the feedback? How will you use it to support your employees' performance and development? How will you align it with your organizational strategy and values? Having a clear purpose and goal will help you communicate the expectations and benefits of the feedback to your employees, as well as select the appropriate questions, raters, and tools for the survey.

2 Choose the right questions and raters

The quality of the feedback you collect depends largely on the questions you ask and the raters you select. You want to ask questions that are relevant, specific, measurable, and actionable, and that focus on the behaviors and competencies that are important for your employees' roles and goals. You also want to choose raters who have sufficient and recent exposure to your employees' work, and who can provide honest and constructive feedback. You may want to involve your employees in selecting some of their raters, such as peers or customers, to increase their buy-in and ownership of the feedback.

3 Provide guidance and training

One of the challenges of 360-degree feedback surveys is that different raters may have different standards, perspectives, or interpretations of the questions and the feedback. To reduce this variability and increase the reliability and validity of the feedback, you need to provide guidance and training to both the raters and the recipients of the feedback. You can provide guidelines on how to rate the questions, how to avoid common biases, how to write constructive comments, and how to respect confidentiality and anonymity. You can also train your employees on how to receive and interpret the feedback, how to identify their strengths and areas for improvement, and how to create and follow up on their action plans.

4 Follow up and support

The feedback you collect from 360-degree surveys is only valuable if you use it to improve your employees' performance and development. Therefore, you need to follow up and support your employees after they receive the feedback. You can provide them with coaching, mentoring, or feedback sessions to help them understand and reflect on the feedback, and to help them set realistic and specific goals and actions based on the feedback. You can also monitor their progress and provide them with ongoing feedback and recognition to reinforce their positive behaviors and achievements.

5 Evaluate and improve

Finally, you need to evaluate and improve your 360-degree feedback process regularly to ensure that it is meeting your purpose and goals, and that it is delivering the desired outcomes for your employees and your organization. You can solicit feedback from your employees and your raters on their satisfaction and experience with the process, and on the impact and value of the feedback. You can also analyze the data and trends from the surveys to identify any gaps, strengths, or opportunities for improvement. Based on the feedback and the analysis, you can make adjustments and enhancements to your 360-degree feedback process as needed.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?