A Study on Necessities and Challenges Associated with Implementation of 360
A study on necessities and challenges associated with implementation of 360 – Degree feedback in Higher education system – with special reference to professional studies in Andhra pradesh, India M. Praveen Kumar[1] Abstract : 360 degree feedback, also known as “‘multi-rater feedback’, or multisource feedback,” is the comprehensive feedback that comes from all the sources that come in contact with the employee on his job.
The report is a comprehension of self appraisal, superiors appraisal, subordinates appraisal and peer appraisal. The results helps to track the changes occur in the employee in various aspects and gives rise to required action. For instance training and development, career goals of the employees, and thus leads to prepare a developmental plan.
The results are also used by the management some times to take administrative decisions like pay and promotion.
On a whole it works like a double edged sword from appraisal to development. This article focuses on importance of varied applications of 360- degree feedback, and the barriers involved in the implementation process with relevance to professional studies Need for 360 – degree feedback: In most traditional methods of appraisal, the communication is one way, from the boss to subordinate. Many methods are mechanical, only numbers are considered for appraising employees, with no weight age to human factors.
The results of all these methods are not encouraging and employees feel hesitate to listen to their feedback, and at the same time managers also try to be good and avoid giving negative feedback When it comes to the academics delivering academic excellence mostly lies in the hands of the faculty and their co staff, thus delivering the promised value of services should always been a higher criteria, and that would be measured and weighted in a proper and genuine manner to deliver the excellence In 360 – degree appraisal, also called as multi-ratter assessment the facilitators receive feedback from their superiors, students, parents and others some times.
Multiple ratters as well as multiple techniques used for assessment Performance appraisals are essential for the effective management and evaluation of staff. Appraisals help develop individuals, improve organizational performance, and feed into academic planning. Formal performance appraisals are generally conducted annually for all staff in the organization. Each staff member is appraised by their department head/ manager.
Directors are appraised by the Management, who is appraised by the chairman or organization owners, depending on the size and structure of the organization. Annual performance appraisals enable management and monitoring of standards, agreeing expectations and objectives, and delegation of responsibilities and tasks.
Staff performance appraisals also establish individual training needs and enable organizational training needs analysis and planning. Performance appraisals also typically feed into organizational annual pay and grading reviews, which commonly also coincide with the Academic planning for the next academic year. Performance appraisals generally review each individual’s performance against objectives and standards set for the academic year, agreed at the previous appraisal meeting.
Performance appraisals are also essential for career and succession planning in the academics – for individuals, crucial jobs, organization, and for the all stake holders as a whole. Performance appraisals are important for staff motivation, attitude and behavior development, communicating and aligning individual and organizational aims, and fostering positive relationships between management and staff.
It also helps in delivering academic excellence of the institution. Performance appraisals provide a formal, recorded, regular review of an individual’s performance, recent publications, innovative techniques used in delivering academics, and a plan for future development. Job performance appraisals – in whatever form they take – are therefore vital for managing the performance of staff and organizations.
Reasons for non implementation of 360– Degree feedback: • Incompleteness of the Process: 360 degree feedback is not the same as a performance management system. It is merely a part of the feedback and development that a performance management system offers within an organization.
Additionally, proponents may lead participants to expect too much from this feedback system in their efforts to obtain organizational support for implementation. Make sure the 360 feedback is integrated into a complete performance management system. • Failure to Connect the Process: For a 360 feedback process to work, it must be connected with the overall strategic aims of the organization.
One has to identify competencies or the comprehensive job descriptions, and give people feedback on their performance of the expected competencies and job duties. The system will fail if it is an add-on rather than a supporter of your organization’s fundamental direction and requirements.
It must function as a measure of your accomplishment of your organization’s big and long term picture. • Insufficient Information: Since 360 degree feedback processes are currently usually anonymous, people receiving feedback have no recourse if they want to further understand the feedback. They have no one to ask for clarification of unclear comments or more information about particular ratings and their basis.
For this reason and for the points listed in the several bullet points following this one, developing 360 process coaches is important. Supervisors, HR staff people, interested managers and others are taught to assist people to understand their feedback. They are trained to help people develop action plans like training and development activities, and motivation, based upon the feedback.
• Rater Inexperience and Ineffectiveness: In addition to the insufficient training organizations provide both people receiving feedback and people providing feedback, there are numerous ways raters go wrong. They may inflate ratings to make an employee look good. They may deflate ratings to make an individual look bad.
They may informally band together to make the system artificially inflate everyone’s performance. Checks and balances must prevent these pitfalls.
• Lack of constructive guidelines for implementation: There was no separate HR department in many institutions/colleges to implement the HRD initiatives and many colleges following very traditional methods to get the feedback or to give the increments. The higher educational council must take initiatives in this regard to be implemented in every organization The problems associated with implementation of 360– Degree feedback: • Extreme Focus on Negatives and Weaknesses: Institutions should focus on employee strengths, not weaknesses.
In a book entitled “First break all the rules: What the world’s greatest managers Do differently”, the authors said, “People don’t change that much. Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was left in.
That is hard enough. ” • A detailed plan of action was not available many times, which ensure the transparent and clear implementation of appraisal with employee accountability is needed • Lack of Effective follow-up is the one of the major problem of 360-degree feedback. Failure in follow-up may cause more harm than good. • The 360-degree feedback is time consuming and cost consuming assessment process. Without having adequate resource to implement the process, it will end up nowhere and develop financial burden to organization. The trust and confidence on the employees who undergo this feedback assessment process is a determinant factor in its outcome.
Many consider this appraisal as tool for downsizing. • The process involves a lot of paper work. As many organizations going to implement green practices, it is better to convert in to use e mails and other methods to reduce the paper waste • There are high chances of subjectivity from the management and employee part in the feed back assessment. But unfortunately that will not be possible in many institutions as the top management has less time to concentrate on it, but this will help to build the organization image in the long run. • Many times the confidentiality of the appraisal cannot ensure from the HR department.
They must be confidential and has to maintain individual counseling on their weaknesses, and suggest the possible solutions • Since the assessment is based on qualitative data many times it cannot ensure unambiguous, clear, specific, and observable and quantifiable formats.
• The results can be manipulated by the employees towards their desired ratings with the help of the raters. • The 360 degree appraisal mechanism can have adversely effect the motivation and the performance of the employees. • 360 degree feedback – as a process requires commitment of top management, HR, and the resources (time, financial resources etc), planned implementation and follow-up.
• 360 degree feedback can be adversely affected by the student perception of the organization and their incomplete knowledge about the process and the clarity of the process. Often, the process suffers because of the lack of knowledge on the part of the participants or the raters. How to use 360– Degree feedback effectively: Use Experts for Evaluation: All raters should not evaluate the employees in all areas to avoid confusion.
It is very important to understand that all raters are not experts in all areas, so they should give feedback in the area of which they have expertise. The raters should be provided with guidance and training. They must learn identifying and describing major competencies of employees expected of their role (knowledge of competency mapping and role analysis is essential). Before actually rating an employee, the raters should be made aware of their own rating biases.
Focus on Task Performance: Focus should be on task and task performance, not on the person.
The Performance Review meeting should focus on developmental issues rather than on criticism. The discussion should not be focused on personal traits like aggression, submission, and other personality features. The feedback should be presented in ways that do not threaten the ego of the recipients. Many supervisors use informal and casual methods to review performance of their subordinates to overcome this problem. In many organizational settings, these methods are highly successful. Show them reward:
The employee should be motivated to complete the tasks and to be effective in their task completion, the employee should be rewarded to et the feedback and the feedback should be evaluated in a genuine manner, the employee work effectively if he/she was get rewarded well and fulfill all their desires in the personal life, family life, social life, and the organization should ensure the above.
Encourage personal development: Organization should encourage the employees to enhance their knowledge by attending Faculty Development Programs, seminars, conferences on the relevant field, so that the employees can learn new things apart from the curriculum and deliver the best in the academics to benefit the students more at micro level and to enhance the organization image at macro level.
Regular reviews on progress: The management should ensure the correctness of the progress by conducting some review meetings on the progress till date in between the semesters, and updating them before going the final feedback, this also led them to think on new techniques of teaching methods. Conclusion: As the recent deterioration of standards in the higher education (especially in technical and management studies), and central government acceptance to let the foreign universities can set up the institutions in the country to uplift the standards, it was going to be the very competitive field soon, and only few institutions those who maintain high standards can retain in the field.
The institutions should think once on how to retain the talented employees and how to encourage them to update their knowledge on the relevant field and be competitive to deliver the excellence, and managements should also encourage the staff to put more focus on research as India has very less emphasis on research, though there are few researchers they were not qualitative and productive to cater the needs of Industry. To conclude institutions should concentrate on 360-degree feedback to lead the educational system in a correct manner and to cater the needs of the Industry, students as well as employees and the total institution as a whole effectively.
References: List of Books referred 1.
360 degree feedback-appraisal or development? , by Sameer Sudhakar Pingle, HRM Review Dec2009 of Icfai university press 2. Aswathappa. (1995), ‘Human Resource and Personnel Management’, New Delhi. 3. Niehoff, B.
P. Enz, C. A. and Grover,R. A. 1990) ” The Impact of Top management Actions of Employee Attitude and perceptions,” Group and Organisations Studies,15,(3) P; 337-352.
List of web sites visited: 1. http://www. essayacademiatips. com/2010/01/how-to-use-360-degree-feedback-effectively/ 2. http://humanresources.
about. com/od/360feedback/a/360feedback. htm 3. http://www. custominsight.
com/360-degree-feedback/what-is-360-degree-feedback. asp List of news papers referred: 1. Foreign universities bill cleared for introduction, The Hindu daily, Tuesday, March16, 2010 ———————– [1]Ex Senior Faculty member and Campus Academic Coordinator, ICFAI NATIONAL COLLEGE, Eluru, currently involved in Ph. D thesis preparation in London, author can reach at praveenmanukonda@gmail. com,
