Preparing for 360: 3 things to keep in mind.

A few weeks ago we had a wonderful HR community event on "all things 360" - we spent almost 3 hours sharing experiences and talking about 360 approaches in our organizations and while the industries, types of organizations, and job groups differed greatly, there were however several things that were common among us and today I'm sharing three thoughts on the Preparation Phase.

1. Understand the why.

360 is an incredibly costly and extensive process when done correctly. You don't want to be wasting all of that resource for nothing.

So, yes, back to basics and to Simon Sinek - start with the “Why?” and understand why we are actually doing this.

Some reasons that are not enough to validate the need for 360:

• It looks fancy! 
• We're going to have a thorough, comprehensive process with measurable results. HR will have the proper numbers! 
• We need to fire someone.

While all of those “reasons” are understandable and we can be empathetic about them, they're not enough to do a 360.

2. Following up on the “Why”: is the process employee or manager oriented? 

And I love how Anita Kalnina put this question!

We really need to think, who is the main recipient? Who are we “targeting” and contributing to with the process?

Is it the employee and his or her development? Or is it the manager and his or her willingness to see results, and feedback and do something with it? 

And I love the off-record input of Jean-Pascal Duvieusart here as well that I'm definitely taking on, which is:

• We don't always need a 360. We probably only need 270 - gather the anonymous feedback from the subordinates and colleagues, but allow the manager to give direct feedback to his or her subordinate. Managers need to have the skills and the courage to give direct and honest feedback.
• Managers don't always have to see the 360 results of their subordinates. Especially if the psychological safety is at stake. 360 (or the 270!) can still be very much and even more impactful if we don't share the results with the manager, but only allow the employee him or herself and the People Partner to look at them. 

This way we take away the stress of radical consequences following up after the 360, which allows people to provide more honest and unfiltered feedback to their peers. Which essentially is good.

Because, again, if we don't have the safety and assurance that I can be honest, then we go back to point number one - the process is too expensive to waste it on fake answers. 

And the 3d point is Preparation and communication. 

I cannot emphasize this enough and am very thankful to Niharika Chaturvedi for really showing the need for proper communication on 360.

Most people don't know what a 360 is, what is it meant for, and why do we do that. And that's fine. But we need them on board. 

First, we need them to understand, what is going on and why are we doing this. 

Then, we need their buy-in. We need them to be on board and willing to do this. We need them to understand the benefits for themselves. 

And I do believe that we actually need to explain the technical side as well. We need to communicate, what is it gonna look like, and how much time will it take. If it's an anonymous process and safety might be at risk - show them the “back office” as well. Show them how the answers are gonna be gathered and combined, how no one is trackable, etc. 

And I love how we covered this during the on-site session as well - start preparing the employees as soon as they onboard. Let them in on the processes, so that they know that this is something that will be happening and that's a normal part of the procedure because what we might not see, being on the other side, is that people often see HR procedures as a corrective mechanism and we want to avoid that. 

And my last two personal thoughts. 

My personal preference and approach is to definitely unlink 360 from monetary consequences. In my view 360 is a personal development tool, a feedback gathering tool, something to help the employee understand, how am I doing and how can I do better, a tool that helps us reflect on the journey and make corrections in my behavior as I move forward. And it's a lot cheaper, more convenient, easier and I would even say more humane to base it on internal motivation rather than external. 

So, let's all go and have more meaningful, more impactful 360's, shall we?