The 360 Degree Evaluation System - Research Proposal Example

HERE HERE YOUR HERE HERE The 360 Degree Evaluation System The System Benefits The 360 degree evaluation system is aprocess utilized in human resources and management in which feedback is gathered from multiple sources both internally and externally related to individual work performance. This system assesses client relationships, internal interpersonal relationships with colleagues and managers, and personal experiences related to the job role with the assessing manager. The general purpose of 360 degree evaluating is to take into consideration the broader job roles and responsibilities related to individual performance to give a more accurate picture of how well an employee is working toward meeting organizational goals. A recent survey identified that 66 percent of employees in different industries do not work in organizations which use the 360 degree feedback system, instead they are using standard company performance appraisal templates (Nancherla, 18). There seems, generically, to be a great deal of available information today which points toward businesses being unable to find the best staff motivational models to bring superior performance. Improving performance is another common theme in business research. Perhaps the inability to improve performance is based on the statistics showing that only a small percentage of businesses are utilizing 360 evaluation methods. If many organizations still rely on traditional, in-house appraisal tools, they will fail to capture aspects of public relations, such as with organizations where client relations are vital to business success. At the same time, it seems that businesses are concerned about issues of employee recruitment and retention, and a more thorough examination into total employee performance might provide better insight for developing and hiring new employees. Many organizations, especially those involved with advertising and marketing promotion, seem to be growing more concerned with image and reputation with a focus on ethics and the creation of a consumer-oriented mission statement. Companies release considerable public relations materials, such as press releases, when they have developed a new and innovative product or service to build buyer interest. Client testimonials sometimes serve as part of these promotions and advertisements (Boone, 269). The majority of contact with clients comes from employees in areas of customer service and support or in managerial relationships in a more formal executive environment. Therefore, the ability for an employee to project an image of sophistication, professionalism, trust, integrity, and overall ethical business behavior is something which organizations would need to consider when choosing which employees to represent the company. The 360 degree evaluation system can act as a model to identify which employees are bringing the best public relations simply by measuring client reactions. Another author supports the 360 degree evaluation system as a method which “really helps to open up a dialogue between manager and employee” (Carmichael, 74). This statement is in relation to areas of identifying employee weaknesses, which seems to be another common theme in management research related to how to address these business problems to the employee. What the 360 degree feedback system would seem to provide, as a means of opening communication lines between the assessing manager and the problematic or poor performing employee, is hard data stemming from multiple sources to justify the need to address the employee issues. Customer insights, actual performance metrics, or even anonymous, written statements indicating colleague thoughts on performance would give the manager more support for his need to discuss problems. It is always intended that the dialogue and outcomes of these discussions would be productive and make a solid business case, therefore the 360 degree evaluation system could act as risk management regarding employee discipline and also enhance how performance problem discussions are managed. The managing director for Performance Coaching International believes that an overwhelming 83 percent of today’s managers “are scared of having the tough performance conversations with their staff that coaching required” (Berry, 6). For the manager not developed for these discussions, the 360 degree feedback tool would also seem to provide a constant point of reference to make them more productive feedback mediums, thus improving employee relations skills in the manager at the same time. “The 360 degree feedback process works best if it starts with senior executives and then cascades down through the organization” (Bracken, 175). Support for the evaluation method seems to be the key ingredient to the success of this new human resources project. In business and organizational research, there is often research conducted on organizational culture and how to create a motivational workforce by appealing to sociological and psychological needs. Gaining senior level support for any new initiative, in the centralized management environment, is often an important part of its long-term success when employees are not resistant to the change and it becomes part of the business culture. For the line manager looking for new tools to assess the employee, the manager should “enlist HR partners to help debrief the feedback report” (Tosti and Addison, 36). Again, this points toward a tool which helps to open up discussions between multiple business divisions, therefore not only assessing the employee, but strengthening relationships at the managerial level and improving organizational culture. Today’s businesses are challenged when trying to maintain an organizational culture which is “flexible and adaptable, alert to new circumstances, able to shift gears, skilled in team building, and capable of cross-disciplinary communication” (Mora, Kaplan and Wies, 43). This represents a dynamic group of employees with skills in areas of effective leadership theory, motivational theory, strategic theory, and with knowledge in mastering the art of client or colleague communications. Many organizations today provide considerable training to their employees as part of a developmental or coaching package to give them better job opportunities and internally-transferrable skills. In order to build a dynamic culture with multi-disciplined employees, training appears to be a necessity. Therefore, the 360 degree feedback system can be built into training modules and development workshops as a means to identify strengths and weaknesses to better enhance learning outcomes from training programs. In an engineering environment, team work and project goals are a common theme and a manager must be able to act as both a leader and an authoritarian in these group environments. Mutual colleague respect and multi-cultural relationships are important dimensions, especially so in multi-national engineering organizations. The 360 degree evaluation system could give the engineering manager a starting point for opening the floor for colleague group discussion by identifying and discussing the system to gain instant team support. By having group members identify themselves and their skills profile and having inter-group professionals approach one another to be selected raters, team projects can gain a positive interpersonal dynamic right from the start. Project teams are inter-dependent by nature, therefore the 360 degree evaluation system can close knowledge gaps through interpersonal group member exchange. Most interesting, the 360 degree feedback system provides results which often act as predictors of future performance from the individual employee (Maylett and Riboldi, 48). A three-year study revealed that behavior and team engagement based on colleague and client feedback improved operational success (Maylett and Riboldi). When businesses consider the costs of retaining employees, they must consider areas of promotion, policy creation, training, and coaching, based on the extent that the company invests in these employee programs. A non-performing employee who is inherently unmotivated can be put through different training programs but still never reach above satisfactory performance as outcomes of the training. With the 360 degree feedback system serving as a prediction of future performance, businesses can begin performing an internal analysis on their training and development and isolate employees who would likely not benefit from redundant skills or leadership training. Unlike the standard appraisal tool, this 360 degree method could potentially reduce retention costs as it identifies an entire group of individual competencies and can predict whether they should be introduced to a development program. It makes logical business sense to consider areas where to cut costs or make quality improvements, even in relation to employee downsizing. Removing redundant training from employees who are not experiencing positive performance outcomes removes considerable burden from the HR manager and the training manager. An organization is going to want to understand which employees are strong and which detract from organizational success. The 360 degree evaluation tool would seem to offer managers a better snapshot of their employees and make promotional decisions in a method which is grounded with multiple feedback sources. Those who provided 360 degree feedback scores which showed positive predictions of superior performance could be advanced quickly through the managerial training and development process, thus giving the business more dedicated and qualified managers in faster time. The 360 degree evaluation system could greatly improve mid-level or senior-level capabilities simply as a retention tool. “To catch up with their high standing, and harboring (private) doubts about their capability, some senior managers are boastful, hog attention, and come across as arrogant” (Kaplan, 3). These often seem to be very common perspectives and assessments of senior leadership, therefore another benefit of implementing this system is to give lower-level employees more practical experience and relationship with higher-ranking business officials to remove some of these social stereotypes from the organizational culture. Senior leaders are not always visible within the business support environment, thus they have little practical working experience with subordinates in different support roles. Familiarizing employees with leadership and helping to engage the leader to discuss business issues would again appeal to the employees’ motivational needs for belonging and build respect for senior management in the process. The introduction of a feedback system which utilizes senior-level commentaries or feedback about junior employees can bridge any misconceptions which exist between organizational ranks and thus improve organizational efficiency and relationship value. Though not all 360 degree evaluation systems utilize client feedback when determining an employee’s performance, it does provide new opportunities for expanding the business-to-business relationship dynamic in areas of customer support and customer recognition. In many engineering-focused companies, routine interactions with external clients occur as a part of the evolution of business and, therefore, client expectations and experiences with organizational staff are going to impact future decision-making on purchases or whether to continue utilizing a business’ services. When building client relationships, as part of marketing, it would be important to highlight the customer’s importance for future business modeling or benchmarking. Therefore, introducing them to be inclusive members of employees’ 360 evaluation methods would illustrate how seriously the engineering manager takes client relationships and is willing to provide an ongoing medium to discuss their issues, ideas for improvements, or basic service quality elements. Making the client an engaged part of the process will only enhance business reputation and improve future business negotiations, especially if the feedback is relevant and prompts immediate, noticeable changes on behalf of the organization. Positive changes in company innovation would also be a benefit of implementing a 360 degree evaluation method because the process also identifies employee strengths. When the superior effort of an employee has been recognized by internal or external raters, perhaps for their contribution to a successful project team objective, methods or process which led to success in this employee effort will be identified. Employees are typically knowledgeable about business processes, learned through experience working in multiple areas of the company, and are genuinely interested in proposing potential solutions to real-life business problems. The 360 degree method recognizes multiple, positive impressions which add support to employees being more autonomous in developing new innovative practices or business solutions. Therefore, this system would invite the employee to be continuously interactive in business problem solving and generate more ideas for innovative business practice simply in the method’s ability to capture real-life accomplishments in a manner that is meaningful and appeals to the psychology of worker satisfaction. Especially in the engineering management domain, innovation is a key success factor for any business looking for a competitive edge or the ability to provide a superior product in a similar marketplace. These 360 degree evaluations could build important knowledge exchanges through previously under-utilized staff with unknown talents or insights and give a business superior competitive edge both in process or product delivery as well human capital and positive employee relations. These innovations, created through the 360 degree system, would also be appealing from the public relations and investor perspectives as they illustrate business performance and feasibility of sustained business growth. By in large, the 360 degree system and its ability to gain perspectives from a multitude of colleagues, clients and managers, is most effective as a risk management tool to identify those employees who are jeopardizing corporate image or are not meeting basic performance standards which are created for all employee demographics. It acts as a risk management tool in relation to ensuring that employee dissatisfaction does not occur while also highlighting areas of strengths in business and employee competency to avoid being outperformed by competitive companies. Any organization with profit expectations requires a solid quality and risk management tool which addresses internal and external components. Considerations for Launching 360 Degree Programs Tosti and Addison warn when implementing the 360 degree system, to beware of feedback reports which contain more than 50 items, a phenomenon referred to as overload. There seems to be a trend with businesses rushing into the 360 degree feedback system because it seems to be very flexible in how it is administered. However, when too many sources are used, areas of bias can become included in the evaluation, thus overloading the assessor with poor performance data. Organizations should be conscious of the employee relations angle, such as interpersonal relationships, when deciding on whether to act on specific feedback received about an employee based on their professional interactions. Some of this data could be biased or be the product of recently damaged colleague relationships that have taken a temporary, yet sour note. In order to launch a successful 360 degree evaluation system, it would seem to take a manager with strong emotional intelligence and knowledge of the interpersonal relationship dynamic to be able to successfully analyze and filter out elements from the 360 degree evaluation system. Any organization looking to implement this system should be aware of the competencies of the assessing manager before launching a multi-source appraisal system. Determining the qualifications necessary to be an accurate and responsible rater would seem to be very practical, real-life business scenarios which could impact areas of employee motivation or even add liability to the company’s risk management strategy. For instance, if an employee was rated by a line manager without practical HR skills or did not have practical experience with the external client dynamic, a senior-level rating or compensatory-based reward might lead to grievances or discriminatory lawsuits. Because of the liability in regards to potential rater errors or incompetency for investigating a full 360 degree analysis of feedback, it is important to identify the risks of implementing this system prior to recommending launch. “The success or failure of a feedback system is a reflection of the maturity of the organization and the individuals within it. And 360 feedback, in particular, is an adult pursuit” (Reeves, 25). Prior to launching a 360 degree evaluation system, it is important to fully understand the cultural dynamics of the organization and assess whether this type of feedback system would be accepted by the existing employee population. In a less-skilled, more labor-focused manufacturing environment, where employees are not multi-disciplined in different knowledge bases, receipt of anything more than a standard cost of living increase might be grounds for employee resistance especially if the environment has a high volume of high seniority, low-skilled workers. In this type of environment, a more traditional evaluation system might be more practical and could avoid jeopardizing relationships between employee and manager based on areas of self-concept regarding their importance in the organization. It seems to be quality business and managerial sense to ensure that such systems would be rewarded with positive employee responses, however this is not practical in all engineering or manufacturing environments. Another author warns that the design of a 360 degree evaluation system should include the employee right from the developmental stage by recruiting them to choose their own team of evaluators (Evans, 9). Offering a list of six to eight internal and external evaluators gives the employee a sense of belonging, which has been proposed by psychologists as being a fundamental motivational factor and need in people (Weiten and Lloyd, 147). Employees seem to be driven by perceptions of equity when they are being evaluated and when performing tasks similar to that of their colleagues. A business, prior to launching a new 360 degree evaluation system, should consider the process an inclusive one which relies on the employees’ competency in choosing relevant assessors in order to build a sense of teamwork and equality in the employee. Launching a 360 degree evaluation system without engaging employees as to its source objectives might have negative outcomes on employee motivation and their willingness to perform to organizational objectives. Failure to engage the employee, in any industry whether engineering-oriented or otherwise, is often a catalyst for higher turnover rates and higher costs associated with recruitment and retention, making this a critical business issue for the modern manager. It would seem logical to assume that there are going to be costs incurred with the development of these types of evaluation systems, depending on their individual complexity. For example, to gather external client feedback in real-time, the development of a communications medium, such as a corporate extranet, might be necessary in order to bring relevance and value to the new system. There would need to be an incentive for the external client to use these systems to record positive dealings with business staff, therefore the convenience of the online environment or email systems are the most likely communications mediums. A business which does not have a well developed system of communications might find the costs of implementing these systems too great for the human resources management budget. If the creation of multiple assessment templates also over-reaches the technological capability of the organization, this type of system would not be practical and should be abandoned in favor of the more traditional appraisal tool. Especially in today’s tough economic environment, cost reduction in multiple areas makes business sense, therefore evaluation of how to implement and support these feedback systems must be reviewed from the financial and strategy levels. The business would need to consider the capacity issue regarding management of multiple feedback databases and determine whether current systems in place can sustain high volumes of individual employee data. Conclusion There are many benefits to implementing a 360 degree evaluation system including better employee motivation and unity of organizational culture as well as improving the interpersonal dynamic with customers in areas of marketing and risk management. The drawbacks, largely, require assessing the internal environment for the ability to support and maintain this feedback and appraisal system while recognizing tangible costs of development. Before a business can find total success with this appraisal system, it must understand the environment in which it will be launched. It can be successfully concluded that with the proper implementation, the benefits of the 360 degree system far outweigh drawbacks and can be implemented to improve strategic, competitive and human resources successes related to human and process capital. Bibliography Arneson, Steve. “Developing Leaders”. Leadership Excellence, Provo. 2008. Vol. 25, Iss. 10, p.8. Berry, Mike. “360 degree feedback analysis reveals manager shortcomings”. Personnel Today, Sutton. 2007. p.6. Boone, L. Contemporary Marketing, 12th ed. 2007. Thomson South-Western. Carmichael, Mary. “An all-round appraisal success”. Human Resources, London. 2009, p.74. Accessed 7 Oct 2009 from www.proquest.com. Evans, Matt H. “Discussion board articles: Human resource management”. Excellence in Financial Management, 2008. Accessed 9 Oct 2009 from http://www.exinfm.com/pdffiles/human_resource_mgmt_articles.pdf Kaplan, Robert. “Versatile Leaders”. Leadership Excellence, Provo. Vol. 23, Iss. 6, p.3. Maylett, T. and J. Riboldi. “Using 360 degree feedback to predict performance”. T&D, Alexandria. 2007. Vol. 61, Iss. 9, pp.48-54. Mora, J., A. Kaplan and L. Wies. “Recipe for Change”. T&D, Alexandria. 2008. Vol. 62, Iss. 3, pp.42-48. Nancherla, Aparna. “Mismanaged Transitions”. T&D, Alexandria. 2009. Vol. 63, Iss. 10, p.18. Reeves, Richard. “Our fetish for feedback”. Management Today, London. 2006. p.25. Accessed 8 Oct 2009 from www.proquest.com Tosti, D. and R. Addison. “360-degree feedback: going around in circles?”. Performance Improvement, Hoboken. 2008. Vol. 48, Iss. 3, pp.36-40. Weiten, W. and M. Lloyd. Psychology Applied to Modern Life: Adjustment in the 21st Century, 7th ed. 2005. Thomson South-Western. Read More