Many organisations are asking “does 360 Feedback work for remote teams?”.

They want to know whether they should be using 360 feedback for remote teams, when many employees are working at home, remotely, and who are not having regular communications with each other the way they normally would. We’re also talking to organisations wishing to start 360 Degree Feedback while their staff are working remotely.

It’s really important in the current situation that we communicate even more than we do normally. When we’re all working together it’s easy to have a quick word, give some quick feedback, talk
about issues, do a bit of coaching and celebrating together. When everyone’s working apart, we only have certain interactions with each other, so it’s really important to make those interactions
count. 360 Degree Feedback is a good way of continuing to do that.

Online system

Clearly having an online system is the easiest way to do this – everyone has access to the same tool and it’s easy for peopleto give and receive feedback.

Communication

Communication is very important, especially for people getting feedback, but also for people giving feedback. Again, when you’re working remotely, there are certain behaviours that are
actually more important, like coaching, frequency of coaching and support that line managers are providing.

Adapting your 360

One of our clients has added a number of questions, and been very specific about asking, in their 360, how the manager has been helping their team during remote working.

One on one discussion

While communication and flexing the 360 questions are critical, it’s also important to give people the opportunity to have a one on one video or phone discussion with their line manager, a coach, or a trusted colleague, on the feedback that they’ve had. This will help them to put the feedback into context. Particularly right now when people are not always getting clear messages , what  it’s important that they have someone to help them work out what the feedback
is saying, and also to understand their development points.

So in answer to the question does 360 Feedback work for remote teams, yes, most definitely – it’s particularly important to allow teams to feed back to their managers when managers are trying to lead teams in a completely new environment.