Employee productivity, morale and health have become the crucial factors to consider by employees since the outbreak happened. As businesses shifted to the new normal of hybrid working, companies are now looking forward to effectively measuring performance to meet their productivity goals. One of the best approaches that companies started practising is a 360 review.
This article will take you to how employers can perform an effective 360 review and achieve desired goals through employee productivity tracking software.
Measures to boost employee productivity
The necessity to measure employee productivity arose as employees were not emotionally engaged with their employers. In addition, due to the current work-from-home scenario, employees no longer feel obliged to take ownership of the work.
Management, therefore, needed to propagate a culture that engages an individual and helps them connect with the job, which, in turn, boosts productivity.
This culture can often be characterised by:
- Setting clear goals – Proactively setting measurable goals and timelines to monitor work progress and employee performance accurately.
- Creating a feedback channel – Instead of reviewing the performance on an annual basis, create a system to capture performance regularly according to the business policy and give feedback.
- Gathering managerial feedback – Timely feedback from managers and supervisors to help employees fix the flaws and increase productivity.
- Collecting 360° feedback – Seeking feedback and outcomes from various channels in the business domain, especially feedback about an employee’s performance from peers and customers to enhance their productivity accurately.
- Using tracking tools – These tools help employees and employers remain vigilant about the time spent on tasks. They have attributes and metrics that can be used for Employee Productivity Analysis.
Implementing a 360-degree evaluation can help motivate your employees to reach their objectives and track how well they’re currently performing in the role.
360 Review: What is it? How’s it done?
A 360-degree review is a professional feedback mechanism that allows a group of coworkers and management to comment on the performance of a fellow employee (or the reviewed).
A 360 evaluation, unlike a traditional employee performance review, takes into account input from peers and reporting staff, as well as customers and other persons who contact the employee. Hence the term 360 considers feedback from all directions of an organization.
A regular performance review aims to assess whether an employee is accomplishing their goal. But the purpose of a 360 review is to evaluate how the employee’s work affected their colleague.
A well-researched remote employee monitoring software equipped with business intelligence makes it possible to measure an employee’s productivity at any level effectively.
Conducting 360 reviews
Different employee performance reviews have different forms. For example, some reviews might include only face-to-face meetings, while others may consist of self-assessments needed by the employee.
360 performance review is a form of professional feedback that provides an opportunity for a group of coworkers to give inputs about each other’s performance.
This allows employees and the organisation to know their strengths and what improvements they want to make.
Some steps for 360 reviewing are as follows:
- Create criteria for rating – Define and communicate in advance the factors upon which each employee’s performance will be assessed. Propose a matrix of skills and performance indicators to enable employees to work on those areas.
- Decide the assessor – Establish the channel of the assessing panel by deciding who/what can best review the employees. Generally, feedback from immediate supervisors and managers, optionally coworkers, and occasionally from representatives of customer domains can suffice.
- Gather feedback – Communicate with designated assessors and get review feedback.
- Get employee self-evaluation – The employee also reviews the performance and weighs upon the remarks.
- Decide time for 360 evaluation – Once the review input is final, set an evaluation meeting for a face-to-face discussion on the review points.
- Appraise the result – Once the review points are discussed, and the employee agrees with the action points, the reviewer appraises and recommends improvement accordingly.
It doesn’t matter how you compile and share 360 feedback. However, you should always ensure that the input is as descriptive as possible to give the employee something tangible to improve.
When sharing is open, ensure you frequently ask for employee feedback on how it works and affects them.
Methods of 360 performance reviews
As 360 performance reviews combine feedback from various sources, the implementation is based on the company policy.
As per a Forbes report (mark this no-follow), the majority of the Fortune 500 companies (over 85% of them) use the 360-degree feedback mechanism to hone their overall leadership skills. However, if you are not a current user of this strategy, we encourage you to take another look.
The most common methods to perform 360-degree review include the following:
Peer-to-peer feedback
Organisations with strong work culture and transparency use a direct employee-to-employee feedback approach. Here, you would facilitate feedback sharing but no longer filter reviews.
Manager-assessed feedback
Most employers practice the approach of aggregated feedback from internal evaluators. Here, supervisors receive feedback from all staff. The manager then examines the striking patterns of behaviour, studies the positive and negative feedback, and prepares a report with comments on the focus areas. It provides constructive criticism to employees without compromising their interests.
External consultant-administered surveys
Some organisations hire external consultants who manage 360-review surveys. Instead of analysing the data, the consultant collects the information and shares it with managers and occasionally with the staff.
The manager and their staff then meet to discuss areas of opportunity and improvement.
Tool-based assessment
Employee performance management software or employee monitoring tools can rate the employees in some evaluation areas by contributors. Collecting reviews this way makes it easier to manage and share feedback as it is entirely digital.
Some organisations opt to use tools that deliver results electronically. For example, it rates employees’ scores in each area evaluated, while others rely on open-ended questions.
The online process makes it easy to collect and share feedback.
The trend
Automated monitoring and tracking mechanisms are also required for business operations.
The IT industry has brought advanced workforce productivity through multilevel time-tracking tools using AI and machine learning to find and record examples of productive and unproductive hours.
Such tools bring responsibility to the organisation and its employees by evaluating billable and non-billable hours. In addition, its reasonable employee tracking approach makes the organisation more productive.
Author Bio
Harleen is a content strategist who is passionate about B2B marketing and assisting SaaS brands through her well-knitted user intent driven content stories.
Linkedin bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harleen-kaur-a19161167/
