Listening strategies vary from organization to organization, but as Perceptyx’s recent State of Employee Listening report has revealed, more mature listening strategies involve listening faster and across more channels.
One component of an agile, integrated listening strategy is feedback. Also referred to as 360 (or 180, depending on which parties are involved) feedback, feedback enables an organization to leverage multiple perspectives to thoroughly and holistically evaluate a target participant.
Recently, Perceptyx’s solutions consultant Cody Fenter and senior consultant Michael Mian joined senior product marketing manager Brandon Riggs to discuss the best uses of feedback and demonstrate how Cultivate, Perceptyx’s, 360 feedback and intelligent coaching product allows organizations to take full advantage of these benefits.
Here’s a look at some highlights of their presentation. To dive deeper, view the full on-demand recording here.
How Multi-Rater Surveys Differ From Employee Surveys
Employee surveys offer a useful way to assess general feelings and sentiments on different topics. Employees can utilize these surveys to raise concerns and share ideas, and leaders can act on the data-driven insights that are collected.
However, employee surveys aren’t an optimal solution to every organizational feedback need. Multi-rater assessments – in either the 360 form that incorporates feedback from the target participant, their manager or work director, their direct or dotted-line reports, their peers or teammates, and their customers or stakeholders, or the 180 form that includes only the target participant and their manager or work director – are the most widely used form of assessment across organizations.
Benefits of Multi-rater Feedback
We’ve identified five clear benefits that explain why multi-rater assessments are so widely used across organizations:
- Balanced Feedback – Multi-rater assessments ensure that feedback about the target participant goes beyond just commentary from their manager or work director. Managers see their direct reports in many different capacities, but they don’t necessarily see everything a direct report might be doing for the organization. By incorporating feedback from the target participant as well as their direct reports, peers or teammates, and customers or stakeholders, a fuller picture emerges of the target participant’s strengths, areas for improvement, and development opportunities.
- Confidentiality and Honest Feedback – Confidentiality drives candor. The more directly confidentiality about the process is communicated to participants, the more likely these participants are to contribute honest, useful feedback.
- Participant Acceptance – Multi-rater assessments are widely used, and this widespread use means that participants typically have a high level of comfort with them. When multi-rater assessment results show broad consensus across surveyed groups, the target participant is likely to recognize that agreed-upon areas for improvement and growth should be areas of future focus.
- Rich Platform of Performance Data for Managers – Multi-rater feedback gives managers and coaches the data they need to have deep, meaningful conversations about the strengths and weaknesses of a target participant. Multi-rater results can also help to illuminate the data collected in employee census surveys about the actions being taken by managers and senior leaders.
Bench Strength Insights – Leaders can aggregate data across team members to determine areas of organizational strength along with areas for improvement or growth. They can determine which team members need additional attention or training, as well as which team members might be ready for promotion and advancement.
Multi-rater surveys can also be part of a development plan for areas of the organization that continue to lag behind. While engagement surveys do some of that as well, understanding where managers are in terms of their need for additional development is also an important health indicator. Multi-rater assessments provide an aggregated view of the capabilities that require development across the organization (e.g., communication skills, strategic thinking) so that training or other learning interventions can boost overall competence. When aligned to the competencies important to the organization, multi-rater assessments communicate to participating employees the behaviors they need to exhibit to move the organization in its intended direction.
Develop Your Multi-rater Feedback with Perceptyx
Cultivate by Perceptyx is a multi-rater, 360/180 feedback product designed to provide leaders with critical insight into their strengths and developmental opportunities based on self evaluation and the input of peers and others they work with. When combined with data from other Perceptyx listening channels, Cultivate provides organizations with exceptional insight into leader effectiveness and how to help them grow.
Our team and products can help you create effective 360 feedback programs and identify what you should be asking employees to improve their experience in your organization. Schedule a demo and let us show you how.