What does Cynthia in marketing really think of your work? Or how about Larry two cubicles over? Does he still blame you for giving him those faulty numbers last week? With more companies turning to 360-degree reviews to evaluate their employees, requiring feedback from a boss, co-workers, and even customers, you're more likely to find out exactly where you stand – 10 times over.
When it works, those who are rated say 360-degree performance reviews help them hone their strengths and weaknesses and even find blind spots. But this peer review system can also pave the way for vindictive comments, office-wide animosity and feelings of being singled out.
______
THE GOOD...
A few years ago, Andrea Joyce, a marketing manager in Toronto, sat down with her boss at the creative agency where she then worked. Ms. Joyce had just been through her most recent 360-degree feedback review and was ready to hear the results.
“Now I'm going to mention something – and you're going to know exactly where this is coming from – so I ask you to not talk to her about it. But you need to know this,” started her manager.
It turned out one person in accounting had a few choice things to get off her chest about Ms. Joyce's professionalism. “Doesn't respect my timing,” was one comment. “Doesn't seem to understand the process I need to go through,” was another.
It would have been easy to get defensive, but instead Ms. Joyce says she took the pointed criticism and used it to turn her actions around, complying with accounting's deadlines to make everyone's lives easier.
“The very nature of 360s requires a certain level of maturity,” Ms. Joyce says now. “I like hearing what people have to say even if it's a bit negative.”
______
THE BAD AND THE UGLY...
But what happens when the comments are extremely negative – or downright mean? It can happen, says Ed Muzio, author of Four Secrets to Liking Your Work: You May Not Need to Quit to Get the Job You Want (Pearson/FT Press, Feb. 2008) and president of HR consulting firm Group Harmonics, Inc. in Albuquerque, N.M., which administers 360-type surveys. Sometimes a group of employees take offence at something their direct supervisor says and decide to band together, much like what happens in academia when students go after a professor for giving them poor marks.
“The same thing can happen in corporate, right? A group can get together and say ‘we're going to lambaste you,'” he says.
And because comments are usually confidential, some markers feel less inhibited about letting it fly. In face-to-face conversation – or even confrontation – many people couch their criticism with something along the lines of, ‘I really liked how you showed initiative back there at the meeting, but I wish you had (insert disparagement here).'
Mr. Muzio says raters who are unhelpful or overly critical usually sharpen their poison pens when they have something to gain from putting another employee down. Companies can stop these comments before they start by ensuring the 360-degree review is used solely for professional development, as opposed to tying it in with compensation or promotion.
That's how they were meant to be used back in the 1940s when the U.S. Armed Forces first started administering 360-degree feedback to support staff development. When computerization made it simple to collect data online and collate results quickly, the concept took off in the 1990s and companies generated 360-degree reports to determine everything from salaries to specific training issues like how so-and-so handles herself in meetings.
“If you want useful information, you want honest information. It's counterintuitive, but the best way to get that is to say, ‘It's not going to go anywhere except to the person, and that person won't know who you are,'” Mr. Muzio says.
______
THE RATINGS GAME
