What is 360 Degree Feedback?


What is the 360 degree feedback process?

Constructive, honest and timely feedback is critical to improving the performance of staff and in turn the workplace and the organisation. Feedback provides staff with the opportunity to recognise their personal and professional strengths, as well as their areas for improvement. When a person clarifies and reflects on this feedback, it provides an even greater opportunity for improvement. The 360 degree feedback process continues to prove to be a valuable tool for providing feedback, as well encouraging staff to reflect on their actions and how these actions impact on others.

The 360 degree feedback process involves you rating yourself against a number of desired behaviours. Other people around you (hence the term 360 degree), also rate and comment on you against the same behaviours through an on-line survey. This includes senior personnel (including your manager), peers, staff who report to you, as well as other people who can provide informed feedback. This feedback is collated, analysed and presented in a report.


What are the benefits for the organisation?

The 360 process has been successfully used in the private and government sectors for a number of years. The desired behaviours in the report should link to the qualities which are important to the organisation, which may include certain capabilities, technical skills and values. This can be useful in terms of succession planning and individual development plans. The cumulative data from these reports can be used to identify organisational strengths and gaps, and across organisations it can be used as part of a benchmarking process. This information can then be used to develop strategies to address undesirable in-grained behaviours and develop desired behaviours and qualities to meet the challenges of a changing and dynamic environment. Research shows that people who are rated as highly effective leaders through 360 degree feedback contribute to lower staff turnover and higher employee engagement among their staff (Zenger & Folkman 2012, How to be Exceptional).

Please contact us for an obligation-free discussion with one of our 360 feedback consultants.


What are the features of the Report Horse 360 solution?

Each organisation will have access to their own private client portal for administration of the 360 process. This provides privacy, as well as customisation of: organisational surveys and report templates, contact details and notification and reminder settings.

The system is largely intuitive and minimises the skill sets required for operation. Confirmation dialogs are displayed on any important action.

Your organisation's employees have access to a unique 360 nomination form for your organisation.

On this form the 'Nominee' will provide their details, the type of 360 that they wish to nominate for and the email addresses (both individual and organisational email group addresses) of the people from whom they are requesting feedback.

Administrators of your organisation are notified of newly submitted 360 nomination forms. Administrators can approve or reject the nomination request. If required, the nomination details can also be modified. When approved, reporting credits are deducted (refer to pricing) and the survey process can begin.

Lists the available Organisational customised reports and Report Horse Global survey/report types.

Lists all surveys that have been conducted or are currently being conducted. Each survey in the list has a unique reference number, response count summary information and a status. This list has many filtering options. For example, the list can be filtered by the survey type and the status of the survey.

Up to 50 respondent email addresses are supported - this includes both individual emails and organisational email groups.

Respondents do not have to complete the survey in one sitting. At any time before the survey closes, survey participants can modify or delete their responses, resuming where they left off.

The nominated person's name is automatically embedded into the survey questions where appropriate.

The report will present the feedback for each of the respondent groups: Self, Manager, Higher-level personnel, Peers, Direct Reports, Indirect Reports, External Clients and Stakeholders, and Others.

If there are insufficient responders in some of these respondent groups, results can be merged in order to preserve anonymity.

Our reports identify where there are significant variances in the scores within respondent groups. This is useful to highlight areas of differing opinions.

The resulting 360 Feedback report does not identify respondents but does identify their relationship to the nominee in terms of the respondent group. Confidentiality of feedback is very important; and as a result personal details will be anonymous. However, as the nominee will generally have one manager, the manager's feedback will not be confidential. For all other groups the feedback will be collated together. Unless otherwise agreed, the nominee is the only person who receives a copy of the report.

People providing their feedback can use their phones, tablets, laptops, or desktops. The interface works well on all devices.

Report Horse provides templates for participation request emails and participation reminder emails.

Organisation administrators can monitor the progress of the survey. They can see response counts, set reminder dates, send participation request emails and send reminder emails. A Survey status screen will display how many respondents for each group have completed the survey.

Administrators can also request feedback from additional respondents while the survey remains open.

Survey participants provide free text answers to describe the nominated person’s values. Report Horse automates this process to a large degree by comparing each free text value response to a list of previously approved value responses. If the response is within the system, then it will be confirmed or adjusted automatically. If the response is not approved, the survey administrator can add the response to the list of approved responses. All changes are shown in the system using a 'change-tracking' approach.

A tool is provided to review, edit, approve or reject written feedback comments. It is useful to edit comments in order to correct spelling mistakes and to improve readability. Rejected comments will not appear in the report. Such comments may contain profanities or the equivalent of a non-response.

It's your data, so you can download it!

Report Horse is both a survey system and a report generator. Therefore, there is no need to export the data from the survey and import it into another tool for analysis. Although we provide this export option, it is not required in order to generate your report.

Report Horse can provide summary reports using the collated internal data. For the Report Horse Global reports, these summary reports will assist with comparisons and benchmarking across organisations and countries.

In additional to general and technical support, Report Horse provides a range of additional resources and templates to assist clients to provide support to its staff, including those involved in the feedback process. This includes suggested information for your internal website.

Our pricing is very competitive. Report pricing is credit based. Credit packages can be pre-purchased. Buy in bulk to save.

Reminders help to keep track of the progress of surveys and to maximise response counts.

This is another unique feature provided by Report Horse. This involves an initial follow-up survey to collate feedback about the 360 feedback process itself. It can also include an additional follow up survey (100 days later) to determine if the 360 feedback process has made a difference.

This can be done by either training your staff or using one of Report Horse’s approved consultants.


How can Report Horse assist you?

Report Horse can automate or customise a 360 degree feedback report for your organisation for a very cost effective price. We also have our own 360 reports which you can also access. Once you have selected the report/s you wish to use, Report Horse will provide you with a quote for the reports. The prices of these reports are very competitive.

In addition to the reports, Report Horse can assist you with:

Please contact us for more information and an obligation-free discussion about our services.