Whether you are a small or a large business, people are your most important asset. Employee development activities are essential for sustainable business growth and to help the broader organisation meet and exceed performance expectations.
Open 360 questionnaires are one of the most effective ways to develop a workforce and enhance employee retention. The feedback tool provides HR professionals and consultants with the focus needed to understand precisely where employees need further training and support to improve their performance.
Unfortunately, many organisations implement 360 assessments incorrectly, using them to single out problem employees, relying on the information alone for performance evaluations, and not setting a clear purpose.
We specialise in helping HR professionals who are frustrated with the challenges of ineffective employee development programs and the associated costs. Using our 360 Assessments, organisations can create completely customised questionnaires to measure specific competencies vital to exceptional performance in a job role. What would these insights mean to you when developing unique employee growth plans?
What is an Open 360 Feedback Questionnaire?
An Open 360 questionnaire is a feedback tool for measuring the skills, behaviours, and competencies of an individual concerning their job role and general workplace conduct. Multiple sources, such as supervisors, peers, and direct reports, provide feedback on the individual. The resulting 360-degree feedback report delivers highly focused and relevant information about an individual’s job role competencies and their working relationships. Organisations then use the insights from the 360 feedback to inform employee development strategies.
A 360 assessment requires respondents to provide anonymous feedback in an online questionnaire that covers a large variety of job and workplace related competencies. A questionnaire commonly combines qualitative and quantitative questions that ask respondents ‘how often’ or ‘how well’ the individual exhibits a specific competency. The person receiving the feedback also fills out a self-rating questionnaire and scores themself against the same set of questions.
The feedback is compiled into an easy-to-read report to help a respondent understand their strengths, development areas and blind spots. HR Managers can quickly spot where perceptions align where they differ.
What are the Common Uses of Open 360s?
Open 360 questionnaires are most commonly used in performance management. The assessments answer the question of how well an individual is performing against a set of required job competencies. 360 feedback has many other applications such as performance appraisals, success planning, and team development.
The most common uses of 360 feedback are:
- Team development tool
- Allow team members to get and give feedback from other team members in a positive way
- Increases openness and feedback within the organisation
- Aimed for team and communication skills trainers and consultants specialising in solving interaction problems, conflicts, etc.
- A tool for managers to get to know their team better
- Performance appraisals
- Performance management
- Training needs identification
- Leadership and Management development
- Employee development
- Skills development
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What are the benefits of using Open 360s?
Open 360 feedback has two primary benefits, to improve the performance of employees through an increase in self-awareness and to inform people decisions.
The resulting 360 feedback report demonstrates if perspectives from different groups align with each other and align with the self-assessment. Understanding the various perspectives of feedback groups increases the individual’s self-awareness, as they become more conscious of their strengths, weakness, and how other people view their behaviour. Drawing on this information, individuals can adjust their behaviour accordingly, and organisations can identify training needs. The individual will become more effective in their role and contribute to the success of the broader organisation.
Other benefits of Open 360 feedback include:
- Increased self-awareness
- Identification of problem areas
- Self-perception vs reality (blind spots)
- Improved communication
- Improved performance
- Professional development
- Improved team dynamics
- Compare feedback from year to year to observe development
What are the Different Types of Open 360 Questionnaires?
Unlike other assessment providers, we provide organisations with full customisation of their questionnaire. Select the most appropriate question scale and determine the response options. Upload your unique set of questions to measure specific competencies relative to job performance. Ensure you measure relevant competencies that help drive employee development.
Select from our pre-written questionnaires to get up and running quickly or develop your own.
- Leadership
- Management
- Sales Management
- Salesperson
- OR develop your own questionnaire
Open 360 feedback Process
- Design the questionnaire
There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ questionnaire to use in the assessment process. Questions should be specific to the purpose of the Open 360 and the skills and competencies required of the relative job role. A great place to start is with our standard bank of questions that you can customise to fit the criteria you need to measure.When selecting a rating scale, it is crucial to understand that no rating scale is better than the others. Scales can relate to effectiveness, observed frequency, and other criteria. A good tip is to avoid a rating scale where respondents can select a ‘middle’ answer, e.g. a 1 – 5 scale, as respondents often gravitate to 3.
- Brief Respondents
Don’t shock employees by surprising them with an invitation email on the day the Open 360 questionnaire is sent to respondents. Ensure you brief employees about the purpose of the questionnaire, let employees know what is expected of them, and what kind of time commitment the process will require. Be sure to answer any objections and concerns they raise.
- Define who will be involved in the review process
This step includes defining the employees who will be reviewed and by whom. We recommend that the organisation work with the individual to select respondents who can effectively answer the questionnaire and provide feedback. Communicate who will be responsible for managing the process and which personnel will be collecting the feedback and delivering it to employees.
- Send out invitation emails
A large portion of the 360 process is automated through our FinxS Online Platform. Simply upload the emails of designated respondents into your dashboard then click the ‘send’ button to trigger the invitation emails and initiate the process. Reminder emails and thank you emails are also fully automated.
- Monitor feedback in real-time
Log into your dashboard to monitor feedback in real-time. View response data to gain answering percentages and follow-up with any respondents who have not yet provided feedback.
- Compile the data
Once all the feedback is collected, analyse the data to spot patterns and trends. The FinxS Platform complies the raw data into simple and straightforward reports. Choose from several report formats to gain an overview of the data or dig deep into a statistical breakdown per question. Unlike other assessment tools, FinxS provides an automated blind spot report to make it easy to spot any hidden talents, areas where a respondent may be self-critical or areas where they are self-confident.
- Conduct debriefs
While much of the Open 360 process is automated, sharing the resulting report should not be. Ideally, feedback should be provided to the individuals in person, by a trained facilitator. Video conferencing software is a great alternative if a face-to-face debriefing session is not possible.The feedback should begin by reiterating the purpose of the Open 360. Feedback should be clear, concise and focus on suggestions to improve performance. The feedback session should result in a simple development plan to support the growth of the individual.
The feedback and debriefing session is the most critical part of the process, as the objective of an Open 360 assessment is to highlight the strengths and development areas of an individual’s performance.
