What is 360-Degree Feedback?

Combined with self-assessment, 360-degree feedback is a powerful development tool for personal and professional growth. It provides a well-rounded view of an employee’s performance, highlighting key strengths, areas for improvement, and hidden challenges. These collective insights shape individual development plans (IDPs) to support skill enhancement, boost self-awareness, and drive continuous learning.

360 degree feedback vs performance reviews

Both 360-degree feedback and performance reviews are essential evaluation tools in the workplace, but they function in distinct ways.

360-degree feedback is a developmental tool that collects input from multiple sources, including peers, managers, direct reports, and even clients, to provide a well-rounded perspective on an employee’s skills, communication, and teamwork. It is typically anonymous, conducted periodically, and focuses on personal and professional growth. 

In contrast, performance reviews are usually conducted by a direct manager to evaluate an employee’s past performance, goal completion, and job-specific competencies. These reviews are often tied to promotions, salary adjustments, and overall job performance.

While performance reviews focus on accountability and evaluation, 360-degree feedback fosters self-awareness and continuous improvement. Together, they create a balanced approach to employee development and performance management.

Importance of a 360-degree feedback

360-degree feedback is a powerful way to help employees within their organization. When implemented effectively, it improves employee performance, enhances collaboration and increases employee engagement and satisfaction.

The term 360-degree feedback comes from the data being collected from multiple sources, including the person being assessed, the manager, direct reports, peers, and customers.  This provides a well-rounded perspective, reducing the risk of evaluation bias.

Research suggests that leaders who receive feedback from multiple sources tend to make more significant improvements in their behavior and performance than those who rely on single-source feedback.

This holistic approach highlights skills gaps and paves the way for professional development, leading to increased job retention, reduced absenteeism, and enhanced overall organizational performance. Furthermore, it identifies employee training and development opportunities, encouraging employees to invest more in their roles and preparing them for future roles and responsibilities within the organization.

Benefits of 360 degree feedback

The benefits of 360-degree feedback go beyond performance management. Let’s look at some of them:

Enhanced self-awareness

People with low self-awareness often struggle to understand how others perceive them. They may wonder, ‘Why was I not chosen to lead this project?’, ‘Why was I excluded from casual conversations?’ or ‘Why do I lose my cool in arguments?’ A 360-degree feedback bridges this gap by comparing self-perception with feedback from multiple sources. Gathering input from at least a dozen colleagues ensures a well-rounded perspective, reinforcing that these insights go beyond a single opinion.

Encourages continuous learning and development

Unlike traditional top-down reviews, 360-degree feedback provides a well-rounded view of an employee’s strengths and areas for improvement. Organizations can offer personalized learning experiences by pinpointing skills gaps and matching employees with the most relevant training resources based on their skills, career aspirations and learning styles. Managers can also actively enhance their skills and contribute to a more engaged workforce. 

Utilize a modern intranet to enable managers to put their newfound knowledge into practice through regular, meaningful interactions with employees.

Strengthens manager-employee bond

Managers who understand how to give consistent, meaningful feedback are proven to improve employee satisfaction, engagement and performance. 360-degree feedback fosters a culture of open communication, allowing managers to gain deeper insights into their leadership style and employees’ needs. Addressing blind spots and reinforcing strengths builds trust, enhances relationships, and creates a more positive workplace experience.

Improved performance and productivity

According to Gallup’s strengths meta-analysis, employees who receive strengths-based feedback during their 360-degree review show an 8% to 18% increase in performance. 

360-degree feedback provides a panoramic view of strengths and areas of improvement, which helps employees focus on their performance and productivity levels.

Related: Increasing productivity and effectiveness using the intranet

Increased engagement and job satisfaction

According to Gallup, 33% of American workers are actively engaged in their jobs. The majority fall into the categories of “just showing up” (52%) or “actively disengaged” (17%). This underscores the importance of fostering a culture of continuous feedback and development.

A well-implemented 360-degree feedback system shows your interest in helping employees progress in their careers without any bias through constructive insights. Since growth never stagnates, employees will feel satisfied and engaged.

Challenges faced during 360-degree feedback

While the benefits are substantial, 360-degree feedback is not without its challenges. Here are some of them: 

Abundance of overwhelming feedback

Receiving feedback from multiple sources can be daunting, especially when it includes conflicting opinions or critical remarks. Employees may struggle to process the volume of information, making it challenging to identify key takeaways. This can lead to confusion, frustration, or even disengagement without proper guidance.

Tip: A skilled coach or HR leader can guide employees to come to terms with the feedback, pinpoint key insights, prioritize growth areas, and turn them into clear action plans.

Prone to biases

Despite its multi-rater approach, 360-degree feedback can be influenced by biases. Personal relationships, workplace dynamics, or individual perceptions may skew responses, leading to inaccurate or unbalanced employee feedback. For instance, some reviewers may be overly lenient or critical based on personal preferences rather than actual performance.

Tip: Encourage respondents to provide their candid observations with examples. Implement a standardized rating system and do benchmarking to ensure fairness.

Time-consuming

Collecting, analyzing and submitting feedback on time can be a lengthy process, especially in larger organizations with multiple stakeholders. It can take several days or weeks to gather all the necessary input, as coordinating with various participants and ensuring they meet deadlines can be challenging. 

Tip: Use performance management software, dashboards or integrate an intranet that transforms feedback into impactful initiatives with real-time insights.

6 ways to maximize 360-degree feedback experience

360-degree assessments can be an incredibly frustrating experience and a waste of time for everyone involved if not done correctly. Consider the following six ways to maximize the impact of a successful 360-degree feedback experience:

Define and clarify expectations

Research from Gallup and Workhuman found that only 47% of employees strongly agree that they know what is expected of them at work. That’s down from 56% immediately preceding the pandemic. 

Therefore, clearly outline the roles, behaviors, and competencies assessed in the 360-degree assessment. When participants understand what is expected of them, both in terms of providing feedback and receiving it, the process becomes more effective. Setting clear expectations ensures that feedback is constructive, goal-oriented, and aligned with professional development, ultimately driving performance improvement.

Who to involve

Build a list of several people incorporating multiple unique perspectives. Before finalizing, have the individual review it with a manager or colleague who understands their workflow to ensure no key contributors are overlooked. A true 360-degree review includes insights from all directions — not just direct reports and peers but also cross-functional teams, senior leadership, and even external stakeholders like partners, vendors, or key clients.

Related: How to give constructive feedback in the workplace

Get the commitment from the evaluators

Individuals often receive numerous requests to participate in surveys and initiatives via mail. A resource suggests that an average office worker receives around 121 emails every workday. Therefore, encourage employees to connect with other individuals being asked to participate (in-person, by phone or by video call is preferred).

When reaching out, have them explain why they are participating in this process and how it can help an employee in their professional growth.

Use AI-powered employee surveys to gather insights

Leverage AI-powered employee surveys to gather deep, actionable insights. These advanced tools help streamline the feedback collection process, offering a more nuanced understanding of employee performance, strengths, and areas for improvement. 

AI can sift through a broad range of data from surveys, comments and other feedback sources to help read the mood within the organization.

Moreover, AI-powered surveys can personalize questions based on previous answers, ensuring that the feedback process feels relevant and targeted to each individual, increasing engagement and the quality of the responses. 

Simpplr Surveys capture rich feedback with built-in pulse, engagement, and ad hoc surveys and prompt action on the insights to improve the employee experience. Surveys help leaders understand employee needs through passive listening that continuously gathers millions of data points across the platform to detect emotions, sentiment and platform usage patterns.

Foster strong connection and participation

The success of the 360-degree feedback process hinges on receiving honest and quality responses from all invited participants. To ensure this, encourage the individual to proactively follow up with each participant to confirm interviews have been scheduled and online assessment invitations have been received. 

Follow-up and reinforce progress

An effective follow-up process ensures individuals understand, absorb and act on the feedback received. To make the most of the 360-degree feedback, choose a platform with feedback capabilities that help you spot and fix problems fast and robust analytics that offer actionable insights.

• Make it simple and keep it short for employees to share ideas and flag issues
• Use integrated surveys to pulse-check what teams need

Putting it all together: How Simpplr can help

360-degree feedback is a powerful tool for fostering employee development, enhancing collaboration, and driving organizational success. Forbes found that over 85% of all Fortune 500 companies use the 360 degree feedback process as a cornerstone of their overall leadership development. Despite its importance, 360-degree assessment can become extremely frustrating in modern digital workplaces if not implemented in the right manner.

Simpplr, an AI-powered modern intranet, helps organizations optimize their 360-degree feedback process with effective insights and analytics capabilities. It also automates workflows, streamlines feedback collection, enhances data accuracy, and provides actionable insights to empower employees and leaders.

Get a live demo to see how Simpplr can streamline your 360-degree feedback process, enhance employee development, and drive meaningful performance improvements.