Star360Feedback

By Bruce Bennett

Imagine you are approaching a critical deadline. You’re just a few clicks away from outputting all the great materials you’ve produced, then – your computer freezes. Anxiety and frustration take control. Your focus instantly switches from your materials to damage control and recovery.

When systems work properly, they are hardly noticed. When they break, it can be catastrophic. A 360 survey vendor provides a critical data collection and reporting system that can determine the success or failure of your 360 feedback efforts. If the vendors’ process is flexible, user friendly and convenient, it’s hardly noticed. You get credit for the success. If the vendors’ process runs into trouble, everyone’s focus shifts to damage control and recovery. You may end up with egg on your face. Choosing the right vendor can make the difference between the success and failure of your 360 survey efforts.

Most 360 survey vendors claim a depth of experience – so how do you select the best fit for your organization? Flexibility, control and real cost test the quality of a vendor’s process and the potential fit with your needs.

Flexibility

Flexibility is more than a feature rich process. Flexibility is being able to accommodate your organizations unique data gathering and reporting needs with a process that is simple, easy and user friendly.

Complications are common with any 360 surveys. People change jobs, lose emails, invite the wrong raters, want to change their answers and sometimes can’t use their web browser. If your 360 survey vendor can handle each issue with speed and ease, the complication becomes a non-event. Issues that take to long or appear difficult to resolve, can taint the user experience.

A bad user experience creates frustration, which can turn to skepticism. Technical problems, complicated data entry, time consuming instructions or lack of help for participants can cause people to incorrectly conclude that the leadership is going through the motions of asking for feedback, but is not really interested in the results.

The more positive the user experience the greater the halo effect for the organization’s change effort. A positive experience communicates that your organization wants the feedback and leadership wants to listen. A willingness to listen implies a willingness to change. A good 360 feedback process will increase the credibility of the organization and its leaders in the eyes of employees.

The quality of the user experience impacts participation. Some 360 survey vendors force their clients into a “one size fits all” process, which may include:

• unnecessary steps, causing the process to feel inconvenient.
• unfamiliar terminology, creating a confusing experience.
• long instructions, making the process tedious.

Consider respondents without web access. Paper surveys are a common alternative, but data collection becomes very slow. The headache of distributing, tracking, and collecting paper surveys is painful. Some vendors integrate web and phone data collection technologies, which makes easy access available to everyone, without sacrificing speed.

Flexibility in report design and delivery is also critical. If people can quickly pull meaning from 360 feedback reports, there is a natural momentum toward change. When action items leap off the page, people know what to do next. Great 360 review reports provide a complete analysis and presentation of feedback, and must reflect your organization’s culture, language and communication style. In today’s demanding world, if executives have to dig through a report to extract action items, the report becomes an obstacle to learning rather than a road map to improvement. The value of the feedback is lost.

360 feedback reports should enhance your brand identity, not the vendor’s. Your logo, colors and corporate identity should be preeminent. 360 feedback is one of many leadership initiatives being used to achieve the organization’s mission and goals. The look, feel and language of the reports needs to communicate your leadership’s commitment to change as well as show how 360 feedback aligns with the other organizational initiatives. The vendor’s 360 appraisal process should be flexible enough to produce any design your organization develops.

Control

Retaining a 360 survey vendor to collect and report feedback should not mean giving the vendor control of the process or ownership of your data.

Your organization needs control of your data. You have paid a 360 feedback vendor to collect and report it. Your data belongs to you – not the vendor. One major telecommunications corporation worked with a vendor for two years before choosing to include historical data in the reports. The corporation was stunned to discover that the vendor not only charged for pulling, analyzing and loading the historical data, but also charged an extra fee every time the data was used. The vendor claimed ownership of the data and thus was within the contract terms to charge the corporation. The corporation was at the mercy of the vendor and could not switch vendors without losing over two years of data.

Ownership of your data not only gives you control of what happens with the data, it gives you the ability to switch vendors if you become dissatisfied. Some 360 leadership assessment vendors will insist that they own your data if they collect it. Be aware of this critical distinction. If your vendor “owns” your data, accessing the data or changing vendors may be difficult. Review the fine print of the contract and make sure you understand the implications of data ownership before you sign.

Many 360 feedback vendors have developed excellent contracting skills. Once they make the sale, they focus on the strength of the contract instead of the quality of service. Negotiate for short-term contracts and include the ability to cancel the contract if you are not satisfied with the service.

Your internal survey administrator, the project leader in your organization, should control the entire process. Your administrator should be able to choose which tasks s/he wants to do and which tasks the 360 degree survey vendor should do. Online admin tools, provided by the vendor, can make complex administrative tasks very simple. More importantly the online tools give control to your administrator, providing instant information and the ability to make changes quickly. Senior executives will have lots of questions. If your administrator has the right tools, changes and information requests are seamless.

The quality of service the administrator receives from the vendor translates into control of the process. Your survey administrator should have a single point of contact and be able to get results fast. If your administrator calls the vendor to resolve an issue or request an action, you want immediate attention. Imagine the stress of your administrator if they call the vendor and get transferred to different departments, then after finally reaching the right person, can’t be guaranteed a time when their question will be answered. Client administrators need support they can count on.

Cost

The organizational cost of doing a 360 degree survey extends far beyond just the financial cost. Collecting and reporting 360 feedback is much like hiring a professional to manage your investments. If done well, you will reap great rewards. If done poorly, the costs can be painful in terms of credibility, focus, resources and money. Your focus is diverted to resolving problems instead of using the feedback to drive change. When the feedback process runs smoothly, your organizational resources to support the effort are minimal.

Choosing the right 360 performance vendor from a financial perspective involves more than selecting the lowest price bid. What’s included in that “report price” varies a great deal from vendor to vendor and can have a large impact on the final cost of the project. Examine the 360 feedback vendor’s pricing model and identify what items are not included in the report price. The longer the list of chargeable items, the more likely you are to be blind sided with charges you did not expect. You should be able to set a budget based on the number of people who will receive feedback, and stay within that budget. If you are charged each time for unexpected events (individual invitations, reminder emails, etc.), your budget is in trouble.

Selecting the Right Vendor for Your Organization

Using an outside 360 survey vendor can determine the success or failure of your 360 efforts. Outsourcing the survey process can assure participants that their feedback will remain anonymous. (If anonymity is questioned, respondents may sugar coat feedback or withhold participation altogether to avoid potential retribution.) Outsourcing also unburdens your organization and lets your leadership focus on using the feedback to drive change instead of all the administrative tasks. Choose a 360 survey vendor whose core business is gathering and reporting 360 feedback.

Like the computer you use every day, your 360 degree survey vendor can be the difference between success and frustration. The right vendor will bring you the benefit of years of experience, and insure that your experience is positive; that feedback drives change and that you stay under budget. Take the time to do your research, experience potential vendors’ demos, look at their reports and scrutinize their pricing models. The right 360 feedback program vendor becomes a partner in the success of your organizational improvement.

Copyright Synthesis Technology, Assessment and Research, LLC