360 review is a highly objective method of evaluating the potential and suitability of staff for their positions. It involves gathering feedback on an employee's professional qualities from various sources, including the employee themselves, their manager, subordinates, and peers. This feedback assesses specific competencies, performance, and potential.
This method allows each team member to understand how others perceive their effectiveness as an employee, colleague, or manager. At the same time, HR gains valuable insights into the specific training needs of employees and career paths.
The PeopleForce toolkit simplifies the entire process by gathering data from four sources and presenting the assessment results visually.
How to organize a review process in the system:
Step 1. Determine what will be assessed and what questions to ask.
Step 2. Create a review cycle: select participants, set a timeline, etc.
Step 3. Run the evaluation cycle.
Step 4. Analyze the results, provide feedback, and incorporate it into decision-making.
Here's a walk-through of the 360° review cycle in the system.
Step 1. What competencies to assess and what questions to ask
Competencies refer to the skills, knowledge, behaviors, and abilities required for an employee to perform their job functions and tasks effectively. It is crucial to promptly review and assess these competencies as they are vital for success. Each company has its own set of competencies. The admin or HR can describe corporate competencies by departments and positions- mainly employees' hard and soft skills.
Admin or HR can start by adding competencies your employees should have and describing them. See Creating competencies for a detailed guide.
Based on this list of competencies, the admin or HR can create question templates for employee evaluations. For example, if one competency is 'negotiation skills,' the question template can include questions about how the employee negotiates with clients or colleagues.
Question templates
Next, you need to create question templates for the assessment. The platform has three types of templates for various purposes that can be combined in the review cycle:
Self & manager question template is used for employee self-assessment, evaluation by the employee's manager, or both. It is mandatory for 360 reviews.
Private manager assessment template is optional as it is necessary for additional confidential questions to the manager. Only managers and users who create and manage reviews can access this part during the review cycle.
General question template can be used in all other cases, such as peer or upward reviews. This template is also mandatory for a 360 review.
Admin or HR can fill each template with an unlimited number of questions. The system provides four types of questions: textual, rating, yes/no, and competency questions. Each type has its characteristics and purpose. Read Dealing with question templates for a step-by-step guide on how to create a template and add questions.
Step 2. Creating a review cycle: select participants, set a timeline, etc.
The next step is Creating a review cycle. Just to let you know, for 360 reviews, you must add all 4 types of participants: Self-Assessment, Managers, Peers, and Upwards.
Consider the launch day of the review cycle and the time for each subsequent phase. Dates specified in the Milestones tab must not be repeated.
A kick-off email describes the assessment's purpose and process to the team. The system also offers the option to send reminders about peer nomination and review cycle deadlines. Feel free to set up reminders and make sure that everyone remembers to complete the review.
Step 3. Starting the evaluation cycle
When the review starts, all participants receive notifications in their emails and on the platform. Each participant has a list of actions to complete within the current evaluation in the Me > Review tab.
To track the progress of the cycle, open Performance > Reviews and click the required review to get the detailed statistics.
Step 4. Analyzing the results
When all reviews are submitted, participates can proceed to the results analysis. For each employee and all participants in total, the following indicators are generated based on their reviews:
Competency diagram
Table of competencies scores in percentage
Average score for each employee from each reviewer side
Performance score
N-box matrix for planning team success and advanced competencies
Competency diagram
The Competency diagram is based on all competencies assessed during the review (from the question template used for the cycle). The results are shown as a diagram with the names of the competencies and the average score of each reviewer side.
Table of competencies scores
The table contains the list of competencies assessed during the review. Next, the admin, HR or manager can see the average score of all reviewers for each competency. Value columns represent the ratings from 1 point to 5 used for a competency evaluation. These columns show the percentage of reviewers who selected the option from the scale. The highest result is highlighted in blue.
The average score for each participant from each reviewer's side
The table displays each participant's average rate for competencies given by review parties. The table also contains a GAP that shows the difference between how the employees rated themselves and the average value of how other parties rated the same indicators. It is calculated by the formula:
GAP = Self - ((Managers+Peers+Upwards)/3)
The >3-5 is a critical gap and has a red color. The >1-3 gap has a yellow color as its moderate value. The 0-1 result is colored in green and stands for an insignificant gap.
This table helps to understand how the employees see themselves, how others see the employee performance, and how different these opinions are.
Performance score
Performance Score is a single normalized numeric value (0-100) that represents an employee's overall performance rating. It is calculated from the manager's evaluation only of their employee's competencies.
N-box matrix in the Insights section
The n-box methodology provides the flexibility that many companies need. To be more precise, you can now compare answers for any 2 questions related to the competencies from the review. The user can switch between the questions in the Question 1 and Question 2 fields, and the grid will display all the employees' answers.
On the 'Y' axis, there is a rating for one of the selected questions; on the 'X' axis, there is another. The saturation of bubbles depends on the number of answers: the more answers, the stronger the colour.
Sharing results
Sharing review results with managers and employees helps to provide feedback on performance, set future goals, and recognize achievements. This process facilitates discussions about areas for improvement and support needed, informs decisions about promotions and raises, and ensures alignment of expectations between employees and the organization.
To share results, open Performance > Reviews, find the required cycle, and open it. Then, click the 'Share all' button to send the results to all participants.
To send results only to specific participants, click the 3 dots next to the required employee and select Share.
After reviewing and sharing these results, the managers or HR can use them for the following cases:
to identify weaknesses and strengths of employees and prepare personal development plans;
for making decisions on remuneration, promotion, or succession of the employee's role;
to revise OKR, the structure of departments;
when conducting 1-on-1 meetings;
for rethinking internal communications, policies, and practices.