If you looking at how to make your 360 Degree Feedback more user-friendly, here’s a story that can help.
Long 360 feedback can be hard work
I was talking to a client a couple of days ago. We wanted to review how to make the 360 questions that they had put into their 360 Degree Feedback questionnaire. The client has had users coming back and saying ‘this 360 is very long’. So we had a look at it together. We wanted to make the 360 Degree Feedback more user-friendly.
The first thing I noticed was that the questionnaire itself wasn’t very long. It had about 20-25 rating statements. These are the statements that describe a behaviour that respondents see, e.g. ‘Jo asks for feedback from her team’. Respondents will rate a statement based on a scale. Scales can be based on frequency, e.g. ‘Always’ to ‘Never’, or a development need, e.g. ‘Is a role model’ to ‘Needs development’. Statements can be based on job roles, competencies or values.
In this instance, I saw that the statements were a bit ‘wordy’, there were a lot of words in each statement. The statements were also quite technical, using some corporate phrases. So a respondent would need to think very hard about their answer. Also, many of the questions were two or three questions in one. If you’re responding based on your observation, and rate a behaviour, you need to be able to separate out each behaviour.
Here’s an example of what I mean: ‘Empowers others and gives others opportunities to learn by delegating the right activities, decision making and learning opportunities’. It’s clear there are a number of things going on in this statement. You may be thinking ‘hang on…what is the question here?’. Is it about empowerment, delegation or helping someone to learn?’.
So the overall experience of respondents has been that the questionnaire feels too long and is too much hard work.
How to shorten and sweeten the 360
To make your 360 Feedback questionnaire more user-friendly for respondents, here are three things you can do:
- Use everyday language, not jargon or corporate-speak
- Make your statements short and snappy, and behaviour based, so someone can easily say ‘yes, I can see what behaviour to rate’
- Have only one behaviour per statement
So instead of the long example statement above, you could provide statements such as ‘Empowers their team to make decisions’, ‘Gives their team opportunities to learn’, and ‘Delegate to allow their team to develop’.
With these simple tips, you can easily make your 360 Degree Feedback more user-friendly and accessible for respondents.
