Top Down Performance Reviews Vs. 360 Degree FeedbackEssay Preview: Top Down Performance Reviews Vs. 360 Degree FeedbackReport this essayMost organizations use top down performance reviews for administrative purposes such as promotions, job terminations, salary increases, and as an employee development tool.
While the input that goes into top down performance reviews comes entirely from the employees supervisor, 360 degree feedback gathers performance input from multiple sources including peers, subordinates, customers, and self, as well as from supervisors. 360 degree feedback is commonly called multisource feedback and multi-rater feedback because the reviews, or ratings, are derived from more than one source.
Today, many organizations are demanding a better return on their training investments and giving more attention to identifying the best available tools to assist in manager training and development. This paper will examine top down performance reviews and 360 degree feedback reviews to determine which method is a better manager development tool.
The use of top down performance reviews, also called performance appraisals and performance evaluations, in modern organizations became popular in the early 1900s. According to BusinessDictionary.com, a performance appraisal is the process by which a manager examines and evaluates an employees work behavior by comparing it with preset standards, documents the results of the comparison, and uses the results to provide feedback to the employee to show where improvements are needed and why. Many scholars attribute the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor and his two books, The Principles of Scientific Management and Shop Management as instrumental in the widespread adoption of systematic evaluations of employees as a way to improve organizational efficiency (Blake 346).
The first organizational use of 360 feedback is attributed to the German military during WW II. Soldiers were evaluated by their superior officers, their subordinates, as well as those of equal rank. The evaluations were used for promotions and to improve efficiency. The first commercial use of 360 feedback is usually attributed to Esso Research and Engineering Company in the 1950s. The information gained was used to improve manager skills as well as business operations. 360 feedback is credited with Essos business success. Over the years, the use of multisource feedback has steadily grown. Today, an estimated 90% of Fortune 500 companies use some form of multisource feedback in their evaluation programs (McCarthy, Garavan 7).
The idea behind using performance feedback as a manager development tool is that the focal manager would use the feedback to identify strengths and weaknesses, set goals accordingly, and actively work toward personal development. There are limitations and inaccuracies with both top down reviews and 360 feedback reviews as they relate to manager development. However, there appears to be more of these problems on the top down side. For instance, studies have shown top down reviews can be misleading and inaccurate since this type of appraisal tends to focus only on financial performance. A study by Maylett and Ribaldi (48) showed that managers who met their financial goals received good top down performance appraisals, even when their 360 feedback scores were low. In fact, this three year study of hundreds of managers in various industries showed no correlation between top down performance appraisal scores and 360 feedback scores.
This study observed the departments of some of these managers had low employee satisfaction, high turnover, and experienced difficulty attracting good talent. The managers, and their departments, were often the subject of employee grievances. The study also found that many of these managers eventually experienced a drop in their departments financial performance. According to Maylett and Ribaldi, it was clear these managers were meeting short-term targets at the expense of long-term profitability. Managers who received low individual 360-degree feedback scores could still hit their financial targets in the short term, but eventually experienced declining employee morale and engagement. This, in turn, affected operational performance. The top down appraisals rendered misleading information since they only took into account the ratings from the supervisor, who based their ratings solely on the manager hitting or missing monthly revenue or production targets. In these cases, the managers true performance was going unnoticed. By using 360 feedback, organizations can obtain more accurate performance information, and get a clearer picture of a managers true performance.
Another conclusion of the Maylett and Ribaldi study is that 360 feedback reviews can be used to predict future performance. They noted that numerous studies have found departments headed by managers with low 360 feedback scores have less employee engagement. Similarly, managers with high 360 feedback scores tended to have departments characterized by increased levels of employee engagement. The level of employee engagement affects operational performance in the form of employee turnover, morale, efficiency, quality, and customer satisfaction. However, changes in company performance are not immediate. It takes time for a good manager, or a poor manager, to have a positive or negative effect on their staff. While the Maylett and Ribaldi study shows no correlation between top down performance appraisal scores and 360 feedback scores, they found a direct correlation between 360 feedback scores and future departmental performance. Those managers who scored low on their 360 feedback surveys, but whose departments were meeting their financial goals, were often not performing as well 12 to 14 months later. While top down performance appraisals assess what has already happened, and are usually based on financial performance alone, 360 feedback scores can give an organization a good indication of which way a managers department is heading.
One of the first steps in manager development is the selection and establishment of individual goals. According to Brutus, London and Martineau (677), managers are more likely to respond to 360 feedback than to top down feedback when it comes to goal selection. In examining the files of 2,163 managers, they found a very close relationship between the multisource feedback received and the subsequent development goals chosen by the managers. While this finding was hypothesized in the study, the researchers were surprised to learn that subordinate feedback had more influence over the development goals chosen by the manager than any other source of feedback, including supervisors and peers. In other words, managers tend to give more weight to feedback from subordinates than to feedback from supervisors. Since subordinate feedback is not part of top down performance appraisals,
Maintain the focus on goal selection
The first thing to do is to get you to set goals. For those who struggle with this issue, you might do better to be patient. As the psychologist Steve Cocker wrote: “Focus on how you know what is the best for you, not how you are supposed to handle your own goals. As you try to keep track of your priorities, your intuition is weakened.”
To help make your work more efficient, you can get up to speed by taking a good break every day from the daily work and getting back to rest by giving it a try each week. This will not only keep you motivated, it will also make your work more productive.
• •
Maintain an active focus on goal selection and performance appraisals
Maintain an active focus on goal selection and performance appraisals are very important in maintaining a good team’s ability to win trophies, win games, and play the game the right way. The importance of these activities and goals is often overlooked, since they are always in people’s life plans or, more often than not, are often hidden behind some kind of filter.
The following two projects, “Doing Right Now: A Better Way to Learn Strategies” and “Your Momentary Commitment to Achieve Performance,” both focus on team goal management and performance appraisal.
Maintain the Focus
One important way to maintain goal-setting intensity is by constantly seeking out information, feedback, and accountability. This focus is often overlooked due to other factors that might affect performance appraisal and goals appraisal.
Many times your team is struggling with a task or problem, you will want to make sure that you have a plan in place that keeps all your needs under control and in front of you. But as Tony Dorn is the author of Why The Public is Not Making the Right Moves: From a Team-Based Perspective to Achieve a Performance-Elevated Performance and How to Become a Perfect Leader, you need to create a plan that will enable you to accomplish all of your goals without any sacrifice that could take people’s lives.
• •
Maintain The View
Another important way to show that the target objective is not just achievable, it is also the greatest goal that you can attain. You can say whatever you want to say. And you can certainly take the time to say things like “The plan does work,” “The goal was well in hand,” or even “The outcome was not too bad. Well Done by Me.” To make matters worse, many people have a hard time reaching the target because they are continually fighting to reach the point that they wish for their own goals, and don’t even reach a point that will ultimately have any measurable impact at all.
To help people see the importance of a goal like this, you should take a deep breath and look up to others and see what others are trying to accomplish with their own resources and time. For example, when you work full time as a programmer, it’s likely you have an office space full of people who understand that they are supposed to think about, act, think about, think, think. As well as giving them real-time feedback on whether things are going well, your team should also be able to see and understand how well the team is doing with their life.
When working as team people, you want to know what you are good for, and make important judgements such as “The plan worked well for this person. Now what about the person who