How many is too many?

Deciding how many raters to have in your feedback

This is way up there in the "what do you get asked most" table. Many of our clients immediately recognise the conflict between having lots of raters - to get the most rounded feedback - and keeping rater numbers low to stop the procedure becoming too burdensome.

Let me start with our recommendation and then work back. We recommend 8-12 raters. Anything under 6 and we start to worry; anything over 15 and we worry about that as well (we worry about our clients see!)

The factors that move you toward a lower number are:

• burden (linked to how many questions there are in the appraisal - I'll write about that another time),
  
• desire to get a tight set of feedback results, and
• a desire to ensure everyone who gives feedback has something useful to say.

The factors that make you move to a larger number are:

• anonymity - another broad topic for another day, but you do need a quorum of responses if you wish to retain anonymity
• wishing to make the process as inclusive as possible
• having a range of roles you want feedback from (external peers, internal peers, customers, suppliers, etc.) - a real benefit of an online 360 degree appraisal system
  

What we would say is that big is not necessarily better. After a certain level you will find that you can't see the wood for the trees. When giving feedback you actually find the volume of information - particularly from narrative sections - overwhelming and so will the recipient.

As a sweeping generalisation, we recommend boss, self, 3-4 peers, 3-4 direct reports. We see, and recommend, a great deal of variation from that set-up but it's a good starting place.

Brendan

Find out more about 360 appraisal systems with Bowland Solutions