Hi, I was in the Air Force as a healthcare administrator and we didn't use the tool then, however, the first civilian hospital where I worked started it...after I was there only 3 months! Even the tenured staff were a bit put off by the 360 feedback. It can be brutal where people can throw grenades at you (anonymously) based on one or two encounters, before you've been able to establish rapport or a successful relationship, hence, some comments from peers (or staff that you've had to counsel) can be a bit negative. The good thing is that it does give your supervisor some insight on areas that they can mentor you on as far as communication skills, professional development, relationship building, etc. We had one-on-one time with a HR 'specialist' with the results & she gave me tips on improvement before I met with my boss, who was very nice & didn't follow every single word or comment on the 360 feedback. It might prove to be a good tool for you, as a supervisor, to use one day.

At my organization, we currently employ the 360 degree feedback method as part of our overall annual review process, and I have to agree with Carolyn. I have found, both as a manager and an employee, that you either get stellar responses from other employees who are really just capitalizing on the opportunity to help there "friend" receive a good review or you get a response that is extremely negative. In 3 years have yet to really receive a constructive review of a staff member. I am not convinced it really helps management gauge an employee’s performance.

I currently use a simple 360 form for the evaluation of the clinical managers at my facility. Since we have a very small middle management structure and I have multiple reports and it is very difficult for me to evaluate each manager without input from their peers. As we all know, teamwork is a major component of healthcare and you can’t evaluate a manager on how he/she acts when they are in your company or complete tasks that you assigned. I want to see how they get things accomplished with other managers and team members on a daily basis. I send out a select number of 360’s to their peers and to some of their employees. I then take the 360’s and use the comments as a tool in my overall evaluation of the manager. To use the 360’s in the evaluation process you need to know the behaviors and the characteristics of the person you are evaluating and the people filling out the 360’s. Then you can take the scores and the comments and use them to assist in the evaluation process, but not as a short cut to the evaluation process.

Every organization I have been with utilizes some sort of 360 degree feedback mechanism as a part of the review process. However, all of my experiences have been that they are not the primary driver in the review, but more of a supplementary source for feedback. As with all performance reviews, I believe that 360 degree feedback should not be a surprise when discussed in a review, but we should all make an effort to ensure our peers, managers and subordinates feel they can provide constructive criticism throughout the year. In addition to that enabling an environment of ongoing improvement, it helps me individually be attuned to how I am percieved and how my actions/style impact my colleauges of all levels.

I also used the 360 degreee feedback model but it was at Squadron Officer School. It worked well if everyone actually put a decent amount of time into their peers evaluations. I found that a good percentage of the students did spend a fair amount of time writing true and meaningful feedback, but 25% of the people just thought of this as another task they did not have time for and did not put down substantial feedback. In my current job, we do not use 360 degree feedback and I think it would be very beneficial for many of the same reasons posted by Krista.

We do utilize a 360 degree feedback tool in our organization, however, not as an evaluation tool, but as a feedback tool for new managers/leaders in the organizations. With a mentor, a new manager/supervisor identfies 10 individuals to give the tool to. The completed tools are returned to the mentor, who reviews with the individual evaluated. It allows for opportunities to be identified, both strengths and areas to improve upon. I have found it helpful in this type of situation, however, a 360 degree evaluation or any peer review process for employee evaluations often leads to the many issues mentioned above.

I worked for an organization that used a 360 degree feedback tool. The actual feedback was not tied to compensation or merit raises, as it was meant to give the employee an idea of what peers thought of their work. I believe it was helpful in developing team dynamics. I also think that their was a little more honesty coming from the peers since they knew their input would not hurt the pay of the person being evaluated, and would not come back to haunt them when it was their turn to be evaluated.

60% of most hospitals are made up of nurses, but I rarely see anything such as the 360 degree feedback tool used on nurses. I often see it used with management. Does anyone know of any self revealing tools that can be used in a department with a group of nurses?

I am a nurse. At my last hospital 360 degree feedback was used for evaluations, and was included in consideration for merit raises. I believed it was ambiguous, somewhat negative, and did not give a reliable parameter for judging performance. It was a qualitative metric, not a quantitative one. My present facility uses measurable, achievable goals cascaded from administration to determine performance. This takes the personalities out of the mix, and provides reliable feedback. We do use peer committees for behavioral interviewing to guide our hiring selections.