Selecting your own questions

Does one size fit all?

We have been providing 360 degree appraisal systems for 6 or 7 years now. One trend that we have noticed is a move to having recipients have some control over the questions that are asked. At one extreme we have responded to this with a full self service appraisal solution www.myown360.com . But for most of our corporate clients the requirement is to allow the recipient to tailor their questionnaire or simply select the competencies that they should be assessed upon.

We see this as a great development. It assists the process of gaining the recipient's buy-in to their own feedback, reduces the number of questions that are not relevant, and often reduces the overall question count as there is no need for a superset of questions that everyone is asked.

A free-for-all is not the answer of course. Instead, we encourage organisations to set the overall framework - perhaps including some core competencies that are asked of everyone. Optional competencies are then selected from a range designed by HR or with our involvement.

As well as selecting competencies we are also seeing requests to select the questions that are to be asked. For a given competency the company may offer up 6 alternatives with the recipient selecting the 4 they see as most appropriate.

We beleive the benefits of an online 360 degree appraisal system are starting to be realised as the introduction of practices that improve 360 are being introduced at the same time as costs are reduced through a move from a paper-based procedure.

360 degree appraisals from Bowland Solutions

Online 360 degree appraisals

Online versus paper

As a provider of online 360 degree appraisals it will come as no surprise that we see value in moving the process away from paper-based. If you are having to make the case for an investment in a 360 system then here is a list of what we see as the key benefits. Some obvious, some less so.

• Reduced administrative overload - the key reason people approach us
• Flexibility on questionnaires - it is very simple to have subsets of questions for peers compared to direct reports, say. You could do this on paper, but I wouldn't recommend it!
• Able to monitor and chase progress easily
• Higher completion rates. I'm sure someone has worked out why, but people respond to email better than they respond to paper.
• Great flexibility on reporting - and reporting is instant
• Reduced ongoing cost
• Simple routes to get consolidated reports - that analyse strengths and weaknesses over a range of demographic information
• Integrate into your performance review process - or even your course delegate management system.
• Repeating the process is trivial

Frankly, for more than 10 people I would not consider a paper-based 360 process. And even for smaller numbers, solutions like our self-service 360 www.myown360.com make more sense than paper.

Brendan

360 degree appraisals from Bowland Solutions