Introduction
If you’re a senior HR professional managing teams, you may consider a CIPD Level 5 Associate Diploma or CIPD Level 7 Advanced Diploma.
While each course develops HR leadership skills, 360-degree feedback is essential for building strong management teams.
Many organisations still collect feedback from only one person. This limited view introduces bias and often overlooks key insights about teamwork and competency.
360-degree feedback provides managers and employees with a comprehensive perspective on performance by collecting input from multiple colleagues throughout the company.
This article outlines what 360-degree feedback is and how HR professionals in CIPD Level 5 or CIPD Level 7 courses can use it to boost team performance and leadership.
Read on to learn how 360-degree feedback in appraisals can support your leadership development.
What is 360-Degree Feedback?
360-degree feedback gathers well-rounded input about an individual from multiple employees within an organisation, rather than from a single source.
This process keeps feedback data confidential, enabling individual employees to access insights from people within and outside their team, as well as throughout the company.
360-degree feedback data is collected from a range of sources throughout an organisation, including:
- Direct Managers or Supervisors
- Self-Assessment
- Company Peers
- Direct reports
- Internal or External Clients and Stakeholders
Simply put, 360-degree feedback goes beyond the traditional single-manager review. It incorporates observations from everyone an employee works with, giving a fuller, fairer picture of their impact.
Why is 360-Degree Feedback Valuable in HR?
One of the core responsibilities of any HR role is ensuring that employee performance is measured accurately, consistently, and without bias, which the 360-degree feedback approach aims to achieve.
Traditional review models carry an inherent risk of bias, relying as they do on a single manager’s perspective. 360-degree feedback addresses this by drawing on multiple viewpoints across the organisation, producing results that are more balanced, more impartial, and less likely to reflect the blind spots that any one reviewer inevitably brings.
Unlike traditional annual appraisals, 360-degree reviews can be conducted as frequently as every quarter or every six months. This means significant changes in employee behaviour are far more likely to be captured and acted on, which an annual review cycle can’t always capture.
360-degree feedback also gives employees agency by encouraging self-assessment, a practice traditional feedback methods don’t include.
Additionally, if there are any systemic issues within a company, 360-degree feedback helps HR identify these challenges and flag them to the rest of the team so they can be addressed accordingly.
The 360-degree review method puts many of the skills taught in CIPD Level 5 and CIPD Level 7 into practice, reflecting both qualifications’ core principle that good HR should be fair, inclusive and evidence-based.
How Does 360-Degree Feedback Work?
The 360-degree feedback process comprises several defined steps. Below, we summarise the key stages that we recommend CIPD Level 5 and CIPD Level 7 HR managers follow to maximise the effectiveness of their 360-degree feedback initiatives.
Step 1: Define The Purpose and Objectives
The first step in conducting a 360-degree feedback review is to realise its purpose and the outcomes it aims to achieve.
Managers must understand why they use 360-degree feedback and how they collect it. This ensures feedback is consistent, purposeful, and truly reflects the competencies the company wants to measure.
Defining the objectives of the feedback method can take as little as a few days or as long as a few weeks, depending on a range of factors stretching from:
- The resources available to conduct the review
- The company’s decision-making process
- A clear understanding of objectives
- Stakeholder engagement
- The complexity of the organisation
For many organisations, the goals of a 360-degree review include leadership development, performance improvement, identifying skills or leadership gaps, and developing increased self-awareness across the team.
Step 2: Secure Support from Senior Leaders
Before conducting any 360-degree feedback review, it’s crucial that HR managers inform senior leaders of the process and actively endorse it.
When leaders support 360-degree feedback, it demonstrates how vital reviews are to everyone in the organisation, regardless of position. When it comes to reviewing results, endorsement from senior figures also helps managers feel better prepared for conversations about the outcome and future development plans, making the process much easier and more collaborative.
Step 3: Identify The Feedback Panel
During a 360-degree feedback review, information needs to come from a range of individuals across the company.
‘Raters’ provide feedback, and their selection depends on the employee’s role and professional network, making this step essential.
Identifying raters for the feedback panel may take up to 2 weeks, as they may be sourced internally or externally and have to form a range of perspectives.
To ensure sufficient data can be collected about an individual, it’s recommended that the best panels have around 12 to 15 reviewers, so that reliable patterns emerge when analysing results.
There are a few ways that raters can be chosen to take part in a 360-degree feedback review:
Option 1: The employee being reviewed selects the raters
Option 2: The employee being reviewed, their direct manager, and the HR department jointly select the panel.
Option 3: The employee’s direct manager or HR department chooses independently
Of the three options, there’s no “correct method” for selecting participants for a 360-degree feedback review; however, we recommend the second option as the fairest way to assess an individual’s workplace performance using multiple perspectives.
Step 4: Create the Feedback Survey
The next step is to design a survey to capture responses on an employee’s workplace behaviour and performance. An effective survey will ask about their interactions, communication, teamwork skills, and leadership skills.
Designing the questionnaire for the 360-degree feedback review may take several weeks to complete and should collect both quantitative and qualitative data from participants.
It’s important to remember to balance the questionnaire with both open-ended questions that invite detailed feedback and clear behavioural statements rated on a scale of 1 to 5.
Examples of closed-ended questions used in a 360-degree feedback survey might be:
- How effectively does this person manage their workload to make sure deadlines are met?
- Does this person make you feel valued and respected in the workplace?
- How openly and constructively does this person respond to developmental feedback?
Examples of open-ended questions used in a 360-degree feedback survey might be:
- What are this person’s strengths in their role?
- How effectively does this person communicate information with their team?
- Are there any skills or behaviours you feel this person would benefit from improving?
The entire questionnaire shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes to complete. It’s recommended that an effective survey include around 30 – 40 varied, focused questions and avoid vague language. The more abstract the questions are, the less reliable the data received at the end of the review will be.
Step 5: Invite Participants and Distribute The Questionnaire
Before distributing the questionnaire, it’s crucial that the confidentiality, deadlines, and purpose of the feedback review are communicated explicitly to participants.
Each rater needs to know the employee being reviewed and have interacted with them, and their communication with one another needs to be frequent enough for them to have a perspective on the individual’s performance.
360-degree feedback questionnaires can be distributed through a variety of different mediums, including:
- Manual Distribution via email or a shared Google Form
Pros:
- Google Forms is a free platform that’s easy to use and set up.
- Email and Google Forms are familiar and accessible to most respondents.
- More efficient for smaller organisations with a smaller group of respondents
Cons:
- Difficult to guarantee anonymity, which may make results unreliable
- No data mapping out the relationship between the rater and the reviewee
- Data is difficult to analyse, organise, and present.
- Dedicated 360-Degree Software
Pros:
- Software automatically maps out connections and relationships between respondents and the reviewee.
- Confidentiality and anonymity are guaranteed.
- Generates accessible and structured reports for larger organisations
Cons:
- Expensive in comparison to manually distributing feedback surveys
- Some software can be complicated to use and requires training.
- Not necessary for smaller organisations
- Survey platforms
Pros:
- Offers premade templates for questionnaires
- Confidentiality and anonymity are guaranteed
- More cost-efficient than dedicated 360-Degree software
Cons:
- Survey platforms are built for a range of uses, not just 360-degree feedback, so it’s not easy to map the relationship between rater and reviewee.
- Reporting is generalised, meaning that results still need to be interpreted and contextualised by HR.
- Most survey platforms require payment to access premium features.
Typically, an organisation sets a 2-3 week deadline for reviewers to complete the questionnaire, and it’s important that a clear completion deadline be set before distributing the survey.
Step 6: Collect and Analyse Results
Using your chosen method for distributing the 360-degree feedback questionnaire, compile the results into a comprehensive report, with feedback and ratings organised by category and rater group.
The data extracted from surveys should be analysed according to patterns and outliers, rather than individual scores. This is so that the overall feedback isn’t biased and offers a balanced reflection on the employee.
HR managers completing a CIPD Level 5 and CIPD Level 7 will develop the skills required to analyse and interpret data collected from 360-degree reviews.
Step 7: Design a Development Plan
Once the survey results have been collected, analysed, and presented, senior leaders should put a development plan in place.
Within the development plan, SMART goals should be set, along with a clear list of learning resources for the employee, and follow-up reviews should be scheduled so that the employee’s direct manager can provide feedback on the results to the individual.
It’s recommended that CIPD-qualified HR managers facilitate this process, as they are trained to interpret feedback data and translate results into meaningful conclusions and next steps, whereas a line manager without a qualification may not have developed these skills.
What are the Benefits of using 360-degree feedback in management & leadership?
If you’re a manager considering or already studying a CIPD Level 5 and CIPD Level 7, then using the 360-degree feedback approach will be a key part of your training and development as a senior HR manager.
360-degree feedback is particularly essential for CIPD Level 7 learners who are developing strategic HR leadership capability and need to understand the functions and advantages of using this approach for appraisals compared with traditional models.
One of the key benefits of 360-degree feedback is that it provides leaders with a deeper understanding of how their leadership style impacts the people they manage and the wider organisation. By moving away from a top-down-only approach, managers who use 360-degree feedback are far less likely to produce results that are skewed by bias.
Another key benefit of 360-degree feedback is that it promotes psychological safety: when leaders are actively seen to participate and then act on their feedback, they model a growth mindset that spreads through the team.
In larger organisations, senior leaders don’t always have direct visibility into everyone below them, and 360-degree feedback can ensure that high-performing employees are more visibly flagged to leadership, providing them with more opportunities to progress as individuals within the company.
Common Challenges with 360-Degree Feedback and How to Overcome Them
Although there are many benefits to using the 360-degree feedback approach, there are also disadvantages that may arise when implementing its steps. Fortunately, there are ways to overcome the model’s difficulties.
Challenge: Sometimes, respondents’ feedback in a 360-degree review isn’t honest.
Solution: Before launching the feedback survey, ensure that it’s clearly communicated how the data will be used and that it’s anonymous.
Challenge: Raters don’t always take the survey seriously.
Solution: To ensure that raters take the 360-degree review process seriously, make sure the person leading the survey has buy-in from senior members of staff, and that the questionnaire they have designed is focused and concise.
Challenge: Results can sometimes be overwhelming or misinterpreted
Solution: So that results are interpreted effectively, it’s important that HR professionals are trained to dissect and analyse data from the review. CIPD-qualified professionals should be trained for this.
Challenge: There is no development plan in place after the review
Solution: After the review is complete and the results are relayed to the individual, HR managers should put in place a development plan with clear deadlines and accountability.
Giving Effective 360-Degree Feedback as an HR Manager: Tips for Best Practice
When giving 360-degree feedback as a CIPD-qualified or training CIPD Level 5 and CIPD Level 7 HR manager, the quality of the feedback and the way it is presented can have a huge impact on the actions that those receiving the appraisal will take afterwards.
That’s why, as an HR manager, coaching others on how to give useful feedback during the 360-degree review process is one of the most significant steps a person in this role can take.
Before the raters partake in the review, make sure that they understand the feedback they give should:
- Be specific: For example, “This individual communicated project updates clearly in team meetings” rather than “great communicator”.
- Focus on observable behaviours, and not traits of their personality.
- Balance constructive feedback with identification of strengths.
- Position improvements constructively: For example, what could be done differently and why would it help the individual?
As an HR professional, coaching raters before they give feedback is one of the most effective ways to improve the quality of responses and ensure the data collected is actually useful.
Using the 360-Degree Feedback Approach to Build Better Management Teams: Key Takeaways
If you’re an HR manager or professional managing others considering a CIPD Level 5 or CIPD Level 7, or already studying one, 360-degree feedback is one of the most powerful and impactful tools you can utilise in HR leadership.
Despite its time-intensive nature, this model offers many benefits for effective HR practice when compared to the limitations of a single-manager review. The skills required to facilitate an effective 360-degree review, such as interpreting data, handling sensitive conversations, and building meaningful development plans, are what both CIPD qualifications are designed to train.
You can also read our full blog on giving feedback with examples and another great feedback model here.
If you’re an HR manager and looking to strengthen your practice and grow as a leader, it’s worth taking the time to understand which level of qualification you need to take and how it can support your career progression.
Depending on where your priorities lie, two HRC qualifications are particularly relevant to this:
The CIPD Level 5 Associate Diploma in People Management is ideal for HR professionals and managers looking to develop stronger people management strategies and make a greater impact within their organisation.
If you’re an experienced HR professional aspiring to become a senior leader in your organisation, then the CIPD Level 7 Advanced Diploma in Strategic People Management could be the right next step for you. This course is designed for people who are ready to progress from day-to-day management duties and start leading organisational change in the workplace.
