I have personally had experience with the federal governments "old" system literally based on a pass/fail method of several criteria. Although this was easy for managers, it was difficult to address negative issues unless the manager took the time to do so by documenting thoroughly. The government then went to a performance based system which allowed for horizontal progression within bands. This was much more cumbersome (especially initially), however this offered many more opportunities for hard workers to progress under that system vice waiting to get the seniority needed to move up under their old system. From this experience, I truly believe that performance based systems can be very effective, but it has to be done fairly which is often hard. I have never used the 360 degree method (with the exception of factoring in customer service i.e. press ganey scores into performance elements). As a supervisor I would not feel comfortable with subordinates rating me as I may have had to address problematic behavior/performance with the same person who is asked to rate me. I can see the value in it, but I think overall supervisors would be less likely to address problematic behavior given the likelihood of potential "retaliation".

I have used the 360 degree method when I worked for GE Healthcare. It was all electronic and it allowed you to have multiple feedback by supervisors, people reporting to you, co-workers and even outsiders (customers) from the company. I thought it provided a very good basis to make an evaluation rather than having just one person (your supervisor) do an evaluation. You could see in graphic form where the were opportunities for improvement and where there were strengths. I liked it, but it was alot of work.

For staff evaluations, there are two tools I use to make it useful and fair to staff. The first is to review in orientation and at each eval how I measure each of the items in the evaluation. For example, each eval under "on-going education" states that employee has completed som on-going, non-mandatory, non-paid education. For nursing staff, I educate them that they must have 4 items to get the points for this item, for nurse aides I require 2. This can be journal articles, computer search, video conf (our system has many free video conferences monthly) or conference related to their field.

The second tool is a self evaluation that requires the employee to provide input into their eval. One area would be to record their non-mandatory educations.

We do not do 360 degree for managers. We do, however use peer review for every position, including myself. Staff are required to respond to some peer review each year. For me, I have staff send their comments to a nuetral person such as my supervisor's secretary. She retypes comments so that staff are not identifiable. There may be a disgruntled person that takes a pot shot once in awhile but the patterns that emerge are very helpful in improving my performance to improve their job satisfaction. The first couple of years there were very few that have provided input, this year there were 2 pages of comments. Mostly positive but a pattern requesting better communication. I will actually provide some of the comments and report off to staff how I will be trying to improve. I really feel that peer review up and down is very important to building trust and setting the right example.

I tried to incorporate a 360 feedback but no one in my department felt comfortable doing that (they assured me it was not because of me but because they would not want to do that for any supervisor) so I made a survey and sent it electronically. My staff answered it anonymously and returned to the secretary in a white envelope. I felt I met the intent of honest feedback without making anyone feel uneasy. I have also been very familiar with peer review in military education environments. This is always very helpful because it you begin to understand how you are perceived in different environments or circumstances with different pressures. I see feedback is a life-long learning opportunity.

In my last hospital the management team all participated in 360 assessments. All team members choose who participated in their assessment, outside their immediate supervisor. So depending on the managers view of the tool they could manipulate what feedback would be received. I think that the 360 tool is useful, but agree that many people are uncomfortable giving honest feedback. I have always looked at these assesments as ways to improve my leadership skills.

We use an online evaluation and the employee or manager can post comments throughout the year that can be utilized for the evaluation. It has been nice not to print these out for filing and employees have access to all their evaluations online.

Personally, I benefited most from a Servant Leadership project where it was feedback from boss, peers, subordinates and then creation of action plans to address growth areas. Very nice 360 assesment but was not used as the formal evaluation as the team felt they would not give the critical feedback if it would be used against someone on their evaluation