Tips & Tricks

360° feedback

The multi-rater feedback, or 360° feedback, represents one of the most accurate and valid methods for evaluating certain organizational variables.

Being both popular and useful makes it very important that it is implemented with maximum benefits for the organization is achieved.

When you wish to implement an assessment, you must establish clear objectives. The purpose of the assessment has a direct impact on the shape and significance of the items, as well as on the respondents’ attitude.
Correctly identify the candidates who can be included in the assessment. It is important to include in the process people who can offer relevant information about the person who is evaluated. If, for example, a person who does not have a functional relation with the person evaluated is introduced in the assessment process, it will bring redundant information or distortion of the results. It is also important to identify all the people that can offer valuable information about the person evaluated.
Inform, in a transparent way, all the personnel implicated about the assessment’s objectives. Knowing the objectives will ensure a high level of involvement in the assignment.
It is best that each person included in the 360° assessment should receive feedback from at least three or four persons (subordinates or colleagues). Thus the objective of realizing an accurate and valid assessment can be achieved.
It is important that the person evaluated has a relation of at least 6 months with those who offer feedback about him. This way you can be assured that the information received is real, and those who offer feedback can have an adequate opinion about the person in question.
It is also important to assure the persons involved about the confidentiality of the information, when it is possible. For real results, this aspect is mandatory. Very few employees would assume the risk to rate negative their superior’s performance. When confidentiality cannot be assumed for various reasons, it is important to mention this matter.
Inform the persons involved about those who will have access to the individual data. It is important to clarify that part of the results will be presented as statistics in order to ensure anonymity.
The 360° assessments are very powerful tools. It is important that their use is neither excessive, nor infrequent. The best usage is once every 6 months.
Avoid creating very long questionnaires. These require more time for completion and higher costs for the organization. Think of a manager who must complete evaluations for all his direct subordinates.

EOS – Employee Opinion Surveys

The Employee Opinion Surveys met a growing popularity in the last two decades. More and more companies are now convinced of the importance of these organizational surveys.

Whether it is about the Employee Opinion Survey on work satisfaction, employer branding or a new strategy, it is very important to keep in mind certain steps when the decision to implement such an organizational survey has been taken.

If it is the first time you implement such a survey, the employees must receive a complete and honest briefing. It is very important that they understand the role of the survey, its objective and especially its importance within the organization. The result will be revealed in the level of implication when completing the survey.
Do not stress your employees. This principle is borrowed from the market research companies. They are very careful not to stress their sample and overload it with surveys on various matters. It is obvious that no one wants to receive a survey invitation in its inbox every day.
The length of the survey it’s a key aspect. Even if you wish to ask more questions in order to find out as many information as possible regarding a topic, you must consider that a long survey requires more time to complete. The principles of the scientific research methodology assure you that by using an appropriate number of well-chosen and formulated questions, you can obtain more than 95% of the same information you would receive by using 3 times the number of questions.
Confidentiality is probably the most crucial aspect when you perform an organizational survey, especially when regarding hot topics within the organization. By assuring the employees that the information is confidential and it will be presented as means or other statistics, they will be determined to be more honest and involved in completing the survey and you will ensure that the data gathered is real.

Personality

Knowing the behavior of an employee represents valuable information for any manager. For this reason we can say that for over 65 years, personality assessment is successfully used in the business environment. Besides this, personality assessment is a scientific process.

When you want to buy a personality inventory it is recommended that you take into consideration some crucial information.

Make sure that the instrument is standardized in form and number of items. The evaluation must be the same for everyone. Otherwise, the comparison between individuals would be impossible.
You have to request information about the reliability of the questionnaire. The instruments’ reliability refers to the accuracy of its measuring. Psychological assessments are not as accurate as measuring instruments in physics. However, there are statistical methods of calculation/estimation of the accuracy of an instrument.
Very important properties of psychological instruments are the content of the evaluation or validity. Not all personality questionnaires approach the personality in the same way. A very important aspect is to make sure that the instrument you are going to buy evaluates what it says it evaluates or in a single world, it is valid.
In business, the ultimate goal of any process is profit share. Personality evaluation subscribes to the same purpose. Therefore, make sure that when you choose a psychological instrument, it is capable of making statistical predictions regarding the future performance of employees. After all, this is the purpose for which these instruments are used in organizations.
Not every personality instrument is suitable for any organizational process. When you purchase a psychological inventory is important to seek whether that instrument has proven validity in a similar context to yours. Usually this information is found in form of case studies, scientific papers, etc. and is based on real data from organizations.
When you make comparisons between individuals, the existence of norms is required. Since personality tests are vulnerable to cultural differences it is important that the instrument undergoes a process of cultural adaptation and is scored with local norms for scoring.
It is recommended to conduct the assessment in the native language of the candidate that completes it. The scientific community stands for this aspect regardless of candidate’s knowledge of foreign languages. After all, the purpose of the assessment is the evaluation of personality and not the knowledge of a foreign language.