why a 360 degree manager review?

"People join companies, but they leave bosses."
The quality of one's manager is the single most important factor affecting job satisfaction. So if you want to retain your top talent, you better make sure you're doing everything you can to improve the quality of the managers they report to.  In fact, you should be doing this anyway, since the performance of your business is directly related to the quality of your management team. 

The best way to improve the quality of your management team is put a proper feedback process in place. Managers need to know what they're doing well, what they're doing badly, and how they can improve. Bad managers need this type of feedback.  And good managers want this type of feedback so that they can become better managers.

What about your existing 360 Degree process?

Most top companies today recognize that they need to have a 360 degree review process in place, so that their managers can get the feedback they need. The problem is that a traditional 360 degree review doesn't work very well.  

This is what typically happens. The person being reviewed - let's call her Mandy Manager - reads a particular feedback comment and reacts with questions such as:

  • "What do you mean by this?"
  • "When do I display this behavior?"
  • "Can you give an example of this behavior?"
  • "How do you suggest I correct this?" and so on

Ideally, Mandy Manager should be able to get answers to these questions by having an in-depth conversation with the relevant respondents. The problem, of course, is that these conversations can only take place if Mandy knows the names of the people who provided the specific responses. So, in order to make the 360 degree review useful, it is necessary to destroy the anonymity and confidentiality of the respondents.

Of course, exposing people's names ensures that they will NOT provide honest feedback. This is especially true if the employees are rating their manager. Very few employees will openly give negative feedback to their manager, no matter how badly the manager needs it.

So Mandy Manager walks away frustrated. After all, what's the point of getting all this feedback if she can't understand the context behind the comments and ratings? Very often, the traditional 360 degree review can do more harm than good. 

our revolutionary solution

We've seen previously that the biggest problem with the traditional 360 Degree Review is that the manager being reviewed is unable to follow up on the anonymous feedback, to find out why the reviewer said what they did, and to understand the context behind the comments. This can lead to intense frustration for the manager. In fact, this is the main reason why 360 degree feedback can often be more damaging than constructive.

FeedbackRocket has solved this problem in a unique way. Our technology enables the manager being reviewed (call her Mandy Manager) to follow up on any comment by means of a private, online text conversation with the employee who provided that comment. So when Mandy has the initial reaction to understand the context behind the comment in more detail - instead of getting frustrated, she simply types in her question into our system. 
The system then looks up the employee concerned, and sends an email asking the employee to login to our portal in order to continue the conversation. The employee logs in, reads Mandy's question, chooses a nickname, and then types in a response. Mandy then gets an alert, logs in and replies accordingly. So the conversation continues until Mandy gets all the information she needs and understands exactly what the employee means, why they said it, and so on.  Mandy Manager can probe and investigate the specific issues that are being raised to her level of satisfaction.
Importantly, the employee remains ANONYMOUS throughout, giving him or her the safety to say the things that would be difficult or awkward face-to-face. It works amazingly well.

We also facilitate ratings of the manager across a range of competencies and behaviors. Mandy Manager can follow up on any rating - positive or negative - to gain an unprecedented level of insight into the employees' perceptions of her management style.

For example, consider the responses for 1 of the 50 behaviors below - concerning the perceptions around Mandy's honesty and integrity. In this case, 6 of the 9 respondents strongly agreed that Mandy demonstrates honesty and integrity, 2 disagreed and 1 strongly disagreed. 
We might be tempted to gloss over this result, since the average across all respondents is a respectable 7.2. However, this hides some important information. While most of the respondents agree that Mandy is honest, there is a small group who don't. The real opportunity for learning comes from the ability to ask the 3 people who don't think Mandy is honest why they feel the way they do. 

Our system enables Mandy to do just that. She can start a separate private conversation with each of the 3 dissenters, asking for the reasons behind their rating. Again, each of the respondents remains completely anonymous throughout.
Picture
EXAMPLE
The result is an incredibly powerful and insightful feedback process, which takes the traditional 360 degree review to another level.

CASE STUDY


Stuart was one of the first clients of FeedbackRocket. He received excellent ratings from his employees on all competencies and behaviors – except one. Stuart was passionate about success, but was equally passionate when things didn’t go so well. He would sometimes shout at people in meetings. Stuart was aware of this, but felt that since he forgot about his outbursts a few minutes later, so did everyone else. Of course, this is not how his team perceived it. However, none of his employees were able to confront Stuart face-to-face, since they were afraid of how he would react to the feedback.

Using FeedbackRocket’s innovative tool, Stuart’s employees were able to make Stuart painfully aware of the negative impact his actions were having on them. For the first time, his employees could make their voices heard without worrying about how Stuart would react. Through the private, anonymous interactions on the FeedbackRocket system, Stuart asked his employees to give him constructive suggestions about how to control his emotions in the future. He implemented some of them - like dealing with the offending party in a separate session, leaving the room and revisiting the issue the next day, and so on.

When we repeated the manager review a year later, Stuart scored well on ALL competencies and behaviors – including his ability to control his emotions.

WHAT MANAGERS GET

Upon completion of the 360 Degree Manager Review, each manager receives a detailed, printable report containing invaluable insights into their strengths, areas for development, and blind-spots. They receive ratings on 50 different behaviors and competencies valued by employees, and can compare these against their own self-perceptions. 

They can see how they compare against the internal company benchmark, as well as our own FeedbackRocket benchmark. And finally they can identify exactly where to focus in order to have the biggest impact on developing as a manager.
Each manager also receives access to our award-winning conversation portal, where he or she is able to follow up on any comment or rating in the main report. The manager can ask the respondent for more clarity on a particular comment, why the respondent rated a particular behavior in a particular way, or anything that would help to understand the feedback and its context more clearly. The respondent remains anonymous throughout this conversation, ensuring a safe and useful conversation. 

Our clients consistently tell us that these private anonymous conversations they have with their employees are the biggest benefit they receive from their FeedbackRocket Manager Review. For the first time, they are able to open the lines of communication with their employees in a constructive and effective way to get results. 

what hr gets

Once we've run the 360 Degree Manager Review for all the managers in your management team, we compile detailed reports to give you the insights you need to take your management team to the next level. 
Advanced Analytics
We've pioneered an advanced actuarial approach to the analysis of the data in the Manager Reviews. Instead of simply reporting meaningless numbers and endless charts, we translate the data into actionable insights that you can actually use to meaningfully improve your management team. 
Powerful Insights
We identify the good managers you need to look after for succession planning and talent retention. We identify the toxic managers who are causing people to think of leaving.   We tell you  exactly where to focus your limited management development budget and resources for maximum results. And many more crucial insights into your management team ...
In-Depth Reports
At the end of the process, we provide you with in-depth reports for your management team as a whole, as well as comparisons between the individual managers. 
We can also prepare reports for specific divisions or departments, according to your requirements. 
Custom Insight Tool
We also provide you with access to our award-winning custom tool for enhanced analysis of the results. You can create your own custom views of the data, broken down by whichever department, demographics, or employee segments you select. Some of our clients spend days playing with this value-added tool!
We pride ourselves on the quality of our analytics and reports,
and guarantee you won't find anything like it anywhere else.