One of the most difficult aspects of management is determining how employees are performing, identifying areas for improvement, and communicating both the employees' strengths and weaknesses to them without causing an undue loss of employee morale or building up unrealistic expectations. Many employees receive raises based on these evaluations, and entire careers are gauged by the way in which employees are evaluated. However, there have been many disadvantages with the traditional annual performance evaluation in which a manager speaks to a subordinate about their performance. Critics charge that the manager may not understand the intricacies of the subordinate's behavior, and may determine (for example) that someone who seems to have a lot of extra time may be lazy as opposed to being highly efficient. In addition, performance evaluations are highly formalized for line workers, but are often not nearly so quantitative for managers themselves; instead, managers are often appraised on the financial performance of their department. A new technique called 360-Degree Feedback is designed to augment the performance evaluation process. This research considers this technique and evaluates its potential implications for the workplace.
The 360-Degree Feedback Process (3D) uses questionnaires to gather information about a particular employee (usually a manager) from a variety of sources, including managers, subordinates, peers and outside vendors and customers (if appropriate). Sometimes incorporated into a formal performance evaluation (which typically becomes a part of an employee's permanent record), the 3D appraisal is more often used as a developmental tool (Carey 58).
Confidentiality and anonymity for the respondents is a key part of the process since the raters need to be able to answer honestly and without fear of reprisal from the person being rated (Ward 20). In this way, respondents can make honest assessments of the su...