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Service Category: Professional Development (Assessment Tools)
The Problem
A large utility regularly used 360-degree feedback assessments as part of its
pursuit of continuous improvement. Managers annually participated in a 360-degree
assessment of themselves and incorporated the results into their professional
development plans. They became discouraged, however, that the feedback didn't
provide enough helpful information to create truly useful development plans,
and therefore the process did not warrant all the time it consumed.
How We Helped
Upon analyzing the 360-degree assessment tool, we discovered the corporate culture
disapproved of giving anyone a poor rating. Since most managers were rated as
exceeding expectations, few developmental opportunities were identified. Further,
most reviewers did not provide written comments even though these were perceived
to be the most helpful part of the assessment. However, managers felt that many
of the written comments that were provided were too vague to be helpful. We
developed a new, streamlined 360-degree assessment tool that elicited much more
specific feedback across a range of attributes and prioritized developmental
recommendations.
Outcome
- Managers overwhelmingly said the new 360-degree tool was much easier to use and provided more useful information to them than its predecessor.
- The organization is now using data mining technology built into the new 360-degree assessment to better understand their managers' developmental needs and fine tune their large-scale training initiatives.
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