Help! My manager has tasked me to do a report on 360 degree appraisals. I have done the research on what it is about, but I am stuck on the best practices part. I think that I need your help on that!

What's a 360 degree appraisal?

Uhmm... it's actually a method of performance appraisal that provides feedback to the individual about his performance from different people in the company. As opposed to traditional appraisals where only his manager gives an evaluation, 360 degrees often include subordinates, other departments and the individual appraising his own performance.

Best practices? Am not sure, we usually have 6 to 9 people filling in the forms for one individual and these are presented to the person being evaluated by our manager who is a trained coach

In 360, you are rated on various competencies. Respondents fill out a questionnaire with statements and scales. There is also a portion where they could write additional comments about you.

We usually provide easy to read reports along with the standard results, so this way the employee can understand what all these numbers and averages are about.

Wow, this sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it?

Well, it is but we found that the 360 feedback appraisal is much better than old appraisal systems because usually in our company, the manager does not really appreciate his subordinates' full responsibility. So we needed a better and more accurate feedback system.

Yup, in a sense 360 gives you a fuller picture!

We also make sure that we are clear on the different competencies that we want to measure. And we make sure that questions are really short, concise and direct to the point. Not only that, we usually tailorfit the questionnaire to a specific department or function.