360-degree performance reviews

Christian Science Monitor has another excellent workplace trend piece:“To put best foot forward, look around.”

“Started three decades ago, 360-degree reviews reached fad stage by the early 1990s. The low quality of some of the surveys and consulting left a number of companies disillusioned, but 360s have since emerged as a mainstream employee-development tool.”

“‘Any kind of development, as a leader or as an individual, has to have a starting point – an open and honest look at your own strengths and weaknesses,’ says Craig Chappelow, a senior manager at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, N.C, a nonprofit group that develops 360-degree feedback surveys and helps people interpret the results.”

“Most Fortune 500 companies use 360s, but the quality of the surveys available varies widely, says Frank Shipper, a management professor at Salisbury University in Salisbury, Md.” Here’s his homepage with more stuff on this topic, apparently his specialty.

“To do a 360 well, he and other experts say, the consultants and the companies hiring them should build in follow-up support. The person receiving feedback should be able to focus on one or two key changes to make.”

This type of evaluation of supervisors and management is also an excellent tool for harassment and discrimination prevention and defense. Employees given opportunity to give general feedback about bosses who fail to raise harassment issues at this time can be impeached with this failure if they later claim harassment occurred prior to feedback. It can also be used towards the Faragher affirmative defense, both as to the employer’s efforts to prevent and correct harassment (by eliciting feedback on supervisors) and the employee’s failure to complain.