As an HR director, one of the most important things you can do to help your organization succeed is to have answers ready to roll out. When employees understand why an assessment is happening, what goals you and the organization as a whole have, and what the potential stakes are on an individual level, they can give more authentic, helpful feedback. 

Mishandling the 360-degree assessment implementation can have devastating consequences. In a recent SHRM article discussing the pros and cons of 360-degree assessments, one quoted expert warned against using it for the wrong reasons, such as determining compensation:

“I’ve seen departments blow up and employees leave companies because the 360 wasn’t handled properly,” said leadership coach Alicia Arenas, SPHR of Sanera in San Antonio, Texas. “360s are most effective when they are used as a development tool, not a rating tool.”

Instead of running the same risk, it’s important to clearly establish and communicate what the assessments are intended to do. 

In this guide, we’ll walk through the steps you should take after completing a 360-degree assessment so the information is used properly and doesn’t lead to negative changes in the workplace.

Instead of using it to rate employee performance, use the results to identify and implement developmental plans that impact your organization long-term. Here’s how you can do it.

Ensure Participants Are Taken Care of

First and foremost, 360-degree assessments are focused on the individual. Development is the driving purpose behind 360 feedback; however, if participants are unable to interpret the feedback, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify those developmental opportunities.

In order to ensure that participants are taken care of, first-time participants are encouraged to attend facilitated training sessions or participate in a one-on-one coaching session. This teaches participants how to interpret results and, more importantly, how to relate them to career goals through development planning.

Through coaching, participants can learn how to control emotional responses, focus on areas of improvement, and put results in context of their individual role. This is when true development is possible.

Identify Trends

While each individual assessment will provide valuable information, it’s just as important to look for trends in the aggregated information. If multiple employees are indicating the same strengths and weaknesses in the organization, that may determine your priorities for future steps.

Look for trends in how employees across different groups assess the organization’s leaders so you can gain insight into a cross-departmental perspective. Finding where and why those trends differ across groups can point out areas for future development.

Construct Development Steps

Now it’s time to start developing a plan that addresses weaknesses or areas for growth you identified as a result of the assessments. Many organizations approach this stage by simply delivering the feedback, and that’s a mistake.

Simply depositing opinions and results in front of individuals won’t lead to change — it may cause people to feel defensive, argue with the results, or ignore them altogether.

Instead, create development plans for your leadership team. While every leader may have a need for growth, it’s important that the steps be customized and not viewed as punitive or critical. 

You can package development as a group endeavor with individualized steps. Some of the forms development steps can take include:

• Coaching opportunities
• Career training
• Create competency areas of focus for self-reflection
• Ongoing feedback

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Communicate Strengths

Another mistake organizations can easily make with 360-degree assessments is by focusing solely on the previous steps: identifying weaknesses and creating training or development programs around those weaknesses.

However, that ignores all the positives and strengths that your leaders are bringing to the table! When the results of assessments are always focused on the negative, that can be demoralizing and lead to less engagement in development.

Take the time to identify and communicate strengths. This can help affirm leaders’ strengths, reveal to them new areas they excel in, and allow them to feel accomplished if a leader has been working to improve a specific competency area.

Identifying strengths doesn’t just improve morale either — it will encourage leaders to continue demonstrating those skills and excelling in those areas. Letting strengths pass unnoticed may lead employees to believe those skills either aren’t needed or aren’t appreciated, and you’ll risk seeing those positive attributes fade away.

Dive Into 360-Degree Assessments With TruScore

At TruScore, we make it easier to excel with your next 360-degree assessment. Our software makes it easier to perform assessments, aggregate the results, and find insightful trends to assist in your developmental training. Get started with a demo request today!

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When you approach a new organization to deeply dive into the nature of how they work and how their employees interact, it’s important to have the right processes and tools that you can roll out for immediate insights.

Not only does having a plan help start your relationship with the organization develop on the right foot, but you need to be able to assess, review, and provide guidance in a cohesive, actionable process.

360-degree reviews can provide the foundation for all of these stages without the limitations of other assessment processes. In fact, according to SHRM, “There’s no doubt that 360-degree rating provides a broader perspective on employees.”

In this article, we’ll look at how 360-degree reviews can assist consultants throughout a project and an ongoing relationship with a third-party organization so you can help them reach their goals and further your business at the same time.

The Power of 360-Degree Reviews

360-degree reviews provide a more holistic review of a working professional’s capabilities, growth potential, and developmental opportunities. They incorporate feedback and assessments from all directions, rather than just top-down feedback from a manager or superior to an individual employee.

In a 360-degree review, feedback may come from managers, coworkers, employees that report to them, and anyone who interacts with the individual in a professional capacity. This creates a more multifaceted view of an employee.

Consultants in human resources development and organizational growth can access the following advantages from using 360-degree reviews:

• More data and information: The more people you can get structured feedback from, the more robust your results will be. You’ll collect more details that flesh out an individual’s potential. This will help you create better action plans and recommendations, which is good for both the organization and your business’s reputation.
• More purposeful surveys: 360-degree reviews can be customized to suit different organizations and to assess different competency areas. For example, the assessments can collect insights from employees throughout an organization that focus on managerial competencies, leadership potential, and more.

360-Degree Reviews for Consultants

Let’s take a closer look at how the 360-degree review approach helps consultants throughout every stage of working with an organization to assess their needs and create robust advice. After all, when you’re providing a service, it’s important to make every aspect as valuable as possible.

Build Trust

The right approach is crucial in helping you build trust with an organization, especially if you’re coming in as a new face. 360-degree review processes can help you build trust, generate more engagement, and get authentic responses that allow you to create the best possible plans. 

Transparency is an essential aspect of this goal: individuals at the organization need to understand what your aim is and what their role is in your process. 360-degree reviews are structured and offer different, more meaningful results than performance review processes can have.

You’ll be able to share what your goals are and how your approach is designed to help employees and the organization as a whole with development. 

Employees who are already familiar with 360-degree approaches will know you’re there to focus on development and employee growth.

Identify Gaps

To be successful as a consultant, you have to deliver results that resonate with organizations. As you identify gaps, it’s important to have the data to back up your results and provide results that your clients can see for themselves. After all, many organizations have at least a vague understanding of their organization’s gaps, even if they can’t identify them or create an in-house action plan to resolve them.

By putting words and a plan to those development gaps, you can immediately get buy-in from decision-makers in the organization and provide value. 360-degree reviews are the first step in the process because you’re using feedback from members throughout the organization to systematically analyze teams and individuals.

Make Supported Recommendations

Finding and identifying gaps isn’t enough. It’s equally important for consultants to provide their clients with suggestions to resolve gaps and strengthen the organization through targeted development.

Because you’ve used a robust, data-driven process, you can offer plans backed by evidence and highlight specific recommendations that have been proven to work in similar organizations. 360-degree review software is designed to support you as you move from the assessment to the recommendation stage.

Whether your engagement with an organization ends after you give recommendations or you stay to assess the initial stages of putting those recommendations into motion, this stage can make or break your reputation.

Using a time-tested approach with recommendations formed by data is the best way to guarantee success for the client and your consulting firm. You’re much more likely to offer accurate assessments and plans.

360-Degree Review Support From TruScore

At TruScore, we’re here to help consultants deliver strong assessments and even stronger results. Our software can be customized to suit different projects and to delve into different competency areas.

It can also be white-labeled with your firm’s branding so you can build recognition as you take on more clients. Contact us today to learn more about our process, or visit our blog for more insights into the 360-degree review process.

Also known as 360-degree feedback, the 360 survey approach provides a holistic competency review system that can help you see the complete picture of your people, which will help the organization retain talent and provide ample growth opportunities. In this post, we’ll discuss some of the key features of 360 survey software that’ll make it easy for you to implement the process within your organization. 

Prebuilt Assessments

Prebuilt assessments are a critical component of 360 survey software. A good 360-degree feedback tool should come with a prebuilt survey template library, including reliable, valid, and ready-to-go 360 survey assessments for:

• Leadership Competencies. These assessments will cover the primary responsibilities of leadership in the modern business world. 
• Managerial Competencies. These will help you assess the essential management competencies required to make an effective manager.
• Individual Contributor Competencies. These will help you identify where your employees excel as individuals, from the technically gifted to natural leaders. 

Building comprehensive 360 assessments takes time, which a lot of organizations don’t have. Having prebuilt 360 surveys can help save time, improve efficiency, and impact multiple groups within an organization.

Custom Assessments

In addition to prebuilt assessments, you can also get custom templates to help tailor surveys to the needs of the organization. What degree of customization does the tool of your choice offer? This is a vital question to ask yourself when choosing a 360 survey solution for your organization. 

The right tool should give you the option to choose between your own competency frameworks and standard ones. Custom templates are made according to the competency framework required by your organization’s unique needs. Competencies vary depending on the employee’s level and job role. 

Assessments are conducted based on competencies that are specific to an employee’s role. A survey that’s not tailored to these aspects may not be useful. The right software should have an exhaustive list of competencies to choose from for every role and allow the organization to host custom assessments on the survey platform to make it easier to track results. 

Customer Service

Customer support is one of the most important factors to consider when shopping for a 360 survey tool. If you are tasked with choosing a 360 survey software for your organization, be sure to select a tool that provides 24/7 customer support. Poor customer service translates to a bad user experience, which can hurt your employee development efforts.

Around-the-clock support is particularly important for organizations implementing a 360 solution for the first time. Like any other software, it may take time for users to get used to the new tool, and having a support team on standby can help with some of the problems they may encounter. 

As far as customer support goes, there are a few other important things to consider when choosing a 360 survey solution. For instance, what other options are there? Also, it’d help a lot to have software with proper documentation that employees and other users can refer to before contacting customer support. 

White Labeling

Some organizations may want to white label their own 360 assessments. For them, having white labeling as a feature on their software is critical. White-labeled 360 survey solutions provide consultants, businesses, and organizations with customized assessments to bundle with their own branding. 

White labeling can turn a simple online assessment into a powerful branding opportunity, which you can and should use to communicate the positive traits of your organization. A well-implemented white label survey displays your brand message and ensures that it’s well ingrained into the users’ minds. 

White labeling and other forms of customization will make your surveys look and feel internal, increasing trust among participants. When the participants feel they can trust the survey, organizations are more likely to get constructive and actionable insights from 360-degree feedback. 

Easy-to-Navigate

In a 360 survey process, everybody who interacts with your employees is part of the feedback. This includes supervisors, managers, peers, and in some cases, vendors and clients. Therefore, it’s imperative that you select a tool that’s simple and user-friendly. Users should be able to navigate easily when using the tool to: 

• Complete the assessment. The software’s interface should be simple and not cluttered with loads of unnecessary information that prevents employees from completing the assessment with ease. 
• Customize assessment feedback. A 360-degree software should help users tailor their feedback. An easily customizable feedback solution can help your organization quickly address specific issues for a particular group of users. 
• Track assessment progress. Users should be able to track progress after completing the assessment. The software should clearly communicate the process, timelines, and expectations to give the user an idea of how long the assessment might take. 

Improve Your 360 Surveys

For this tool to be effective, all stakeholders — inside and outside the organization — should be able to use it without exhaustive training. With so many options to choose from, getting the right 360-degree software for your organization can be a challenge. 

With features such as a mobile-friendly interface, prebuilt templates, white labeling, and excellent customer service, TruScore checks all the boxes. Users have no reason to delay completing their assessments with a seamless 360 survey platform such as TruScore. Contact us today to get started, or browse our blog to learn more about our intuitive solution.

It also determines whether the company gets to retain and keep attracting top talent. To do the job effectively, you will have to continually measure employees’ productivity,  identify their training needs, and develop strategic solutions to grow their skills. One of the best ways to do this is utilizing 360 evaluations.

65% of employees want more feedback than they are receiving, and 360 evaluations will give your employees a chance to know the areas they can develop. 

What Are 360 Evaluations?

These are tools used by managers, peer workers both from similar or different teams, senior leaders, and team leaders to review and assess employees’ skills. They are used as an individual development tool for employees throughout the organization.

You can use these evaluations to identify areas of personal development that ultimately help employees improve productivity. You can also use multiple raters, including peers, supervisors,  direct reports, and external stakeholders, such as vendors and clients. The employees then receive comprehensive feedback about the actions they should take to improve their work. 

360 evaluations should be tailored to meet the particular needs of your organization. They come in 2 different forms, such as:

• An in-depth questionnaire that includes a numerical scale rating of the staff members
• An interview style 360 assessment

These 360 evaluations ask for contributors’ ratings based on the assessed person’s role-related skills.

Are There Multiple Types of 360 Evaluations? 

Depending on your needs, there are three types of 360 evaluations you can take that can lead to your desired results. We built these evaluations to measure the behaviors and characters of your team.

1. Leadership Competencies

Assess particular skills, knowledge, and abilities that reflect successful leadership in an organization. However, it is essential to note that every leadership position demands unique skill sets, knowledge, and capability. 

We can break down these competencies into three further categories:

• Competencies that enable leaders to lead themselves — you can use these competencies to measure their learning agility, industry expertise, courage, personal management skills, and organizational citizenship behavior.
• Competencies that enable leaders to lead others — these competencies allow you to test your employees’ emotional intelligence, trustworthiness, interpersonal skills, coaching skills, people management skills, and the ability to involve others in various undertakings.
• Competencies that enable leaders to lead organizations — these competencies enable you to assess the skills of various employees with regards to conflict management, decision-making, change management, social intelligence, and your ability to share a delightful vision.

Competent leaders must have the following skills:

• Self-discipline — the ability to withhold personal interest and act in the interest of one’s team. Exemplary leaders should evaluate the consequences of their actions before making rash decisions.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills — an outstanding leader should share concise and essential information to their teams in verbal and written forms. Employees can effortlessly complete tasks on time if their leader provides sufficient relevant information.
• A credible reputation — All team members should find it easy to trust their leader. The leaders should, therefore, be able to prove their trustworthiness. This leads to a more connected team and they will have plenty of peace to accomplish their mission. 
• Integrity — You should verify the character and integrity of any person you intend to make a leader to be assured that they can deliver on what they take on. 

2. Management Competencies

This aspect assesses the zest of individuals in management positions and outlines the required skills for an employee to perform well in assigned roles. Most organizations have a platform through which they identify the skills their employees lack and those that can be enhanced through proper training.

Making employees feel a sense of organizational support, thus improving employee retention and keeping valuable skills within an organization. Managers must have:

• Ability to organize and delegate duties — this helps to grow employees by continually expanding their responsibilities and accountability. Good managers need to know their teams and are able to pick out individual job talents.
• Interviewing skills — competent managers should be able to spot the right candidate for positions.
• Communication skills — a manager should effectively communicate to employees both in writing and verbally.
• Mentorship and motivation skills — they should know the things that inspire their employees and develop a strategy that will effectively motivate them. For inexperienced employees, good managers take time to share their knowledge, experience, and lessons learned.
• Conflict-resolution skills — conflicts occur in every working environment. If they are unresolved, they can negatively affect work relationships. Managers need to know the source and build a win-win solution to create a conducive working environment.
• Problem-solving skills — managers should point out problems, know the sources, come up with the best strategies to solve them, and follow through until a solution is found.

3. Individual Contributor Competencies

Assesses the staff member’s productivity and ability to listen attentively, build good work relationships, and bond with others. An individual staff member should account for his performance and contribution to the team results. In addition, it is necessary for them to:

• Communicate in a concise and unbiased manner both orally and in writing
• Actively subscribe to attaining team results
• Plan and organize their work in line with the priorities of the respective team
• Consider potential changes and be able to adapt to them
• Produce results on the assigned tasks and on time

360 Evaluations and Revenue Growth

We’ve discussed what 360 evaluations are and how they impact team members individually. Below are some of the ways that 360 evaluations help to grow a company’s revenue.

Leadership competencies

It is vital to have competent leaders that can drive a company to financial success. Their role is to guide, direct, and assign responsibilities to employees. 

Using 360 evaluations can help you identify areas of your leaders’ skill sets that can be developed further, ultimately setting you up for financial success.

Management competencies

Skilled managers know their team and their respective talents and strengths. They know where and when to use these talents to ensure impressive performance to achieve increased sales.

As sales improve, so does the company’s revenue. 360 evaluations can improve the performance of managers so they can have a direct impact on your bottom line.

Individual competencies

We directly associate the success you have as a company with the quality of employees you have. Using 360 assessments can help you identify areas where your team members can improve, ultimately increasing revenue growth.

Having identified developmental areas, you can offer internal training to improve skills and set your team members up for success.

Conclusion

Knowledge of 360 evaluations will help you create a winning team for your company or organization. However, consider the timing for the best interest of your organization. For the best 360 resources, from software to coaching and feedback, contact TruScore, the ultimate leader in 360 services.

The world’s best sports coaches develop each team member to reach their full potential, while simultaneously pushing the entire team to success. Likewise, good business managers realize managing or coaching ‘through their teams’ can help their own teams to be more successful.

Effective coaches observe and understand the social dynamics of their teams, as well as the individual skills & strengths of each of the team members, and then guide these strengths and social bonds to come together with shared goals and purposes. This elevates a team’s engagement & performance, as well as its company’s bottom line.

Team standings
A 2012 study by Bersin & Associates concluded that managers who regularly utilized a coaching management style improved business results by more than 21 percent as compared to those who do not use this type of management training and development. Another study completed in 2008 by Insurance Australia Group NZ showed that coaching increased engagement by employees by fifty percent and decreased turnover by half; and the coaching initiative turned a near-certain loss into a profitable year.

Game plan, purpose & goal setting
Check out your lineup! The first step for effective coaching is to take stock of where you are now: what does your team look like? What are the individual strengths and skills of team members and how are they complimentary. What core skills need further development? What remains to be taught? Next, decide what skills have the greatest impact on the team’s bottom line. Measure the current state of those skills, and plan how to support change management.

Getting HR management to buy-in to coaching techniques is crucial to success; by championing the cause, HR managers bring needed leadership and support, rather than becoming an obstacle to be avoided.

With your employees, help guide them in deciding and agreeing on a mutual sense of purpose, as this is what pulls people together and creates that special ‘team effect.’ However the next crucial step is making sure they set tangible goals based on that purpose.

But don’t impose and command. Your job as coach is to “guide” the employees and their team in deciding, as a team can’t be created by decree – not that you can’t suggest, support, define, hold accountable and help point them in the right direction. But a team’s commitment, engagement and subsequent effectiveness will be so much higher if the members all take part in these ‘mutual agreements.’

Play ball
Coaching best practices are quickly changing communications within the team. Open-ended questions are the new norm. Asking questions like, “How are you planning to handle this?” or “How can I help?” will help your employee to think through the situation and come up with solutions. As coach your role is to help your team learn and develop, rather than telling them exactly what to do. John Madden once said, “The fewer rules a coach has, the fewer rules there are for players to break,” so help guide your team members, but also empower them to own their goals and priorities.

Always be “in the moment.” Coaches don’t wait until the season is over, or even until the end of the game when behavior needs addressed, and neither should you. Remember, your job is to guide them along their previously designed path.

Managers in coaching roles should continually teach as they work with employees. The goal is to make them self-sufficient by giving them the tools needed for success, as well as adequate support.

Give appropriate and constructive feedback; and be sure that the employee understands. Ask those crucial clarifying questions, like “What else do you need from me?” or “When do you think you can have this project completed?”

Winning strategy
Support each employee as he or she works through the steps to reach your shared goals. Your employee may come to you for guidance on a situation, but already have their own idea of how to handle things. When you respond to their request with, “What do you think is the best way to handle it?” their confidence will soar!

Great coaches inspire their teams to great achievements; they demand excellence and gain the respect of their team while guiding them along a focused path. The organization’s bottom line will increase, and so will your individual value once you become known as a coach and a manager.