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"Now there's a practical, affordable and remarkably easy way to gather
and analyze rich 360 degree
multirater feedback, giving your employees the broad, balanced perspective
they need to develop and improve."
Source : Halogen Software
Making Multi-rater Feedback Work in Professional Services Firms
Multi Rater Feedback is also known as :
360 Degree Feedback,
Multi Rater,
360 Degree Feedback Tools,
Faster Multirater Reviews,
Multirater Feedback Process,
Multi Rater Assessments,
360 Degree Feedback Software,
360 Feedback Service,
Multi Level Feedback,
Multi Rater Feedback Methods,
Multi Rater Feedback Reviews,
Web Based Multi Rater Feedback,
Low Cost Multi Rater Feedback,
Multi Rater Feedback Form,
Multi Rater Feedback Instruments,
Online Multi Rater Feedback,
Multi Rater Feedback System,
Manage Multirater Feedback,
Constructive Multi Rater Feedback,
Multi Rater Reports,
Evaluating Multi Rater Feedback,
Multi Rater Development Feedback,
Robust Multi Rater Feedback,
Alternative Multi Rater Feedback,
Multi Rater Feedback Options.
The Missing Boss
On TV shows an oice is a place where the boss is near at hand, drifting in and out
of the workplace to observe, coach and direct. This may represent life in some oices,
but it isn’t the case for people in most professional services irms. Professionals, such as
consultants, accountants, architects and lawyers typically work on many diferent accounts
or projects, continually moving on to new teams with diferent leaders. At Clark Nuber, an
accounting irm based in Bellevue, WA, an associate might work for ten or more managers over
the course of a single quarter.
For many irms, continually moving people on to new projects under diferent leaders is the only
possible way to operate. But the implication is that the traditional boss is missing. The formal
boss on the org chart is only loosely involved in directing day-to-day work and may rarely get a
chance to observe an employee in a work situation. At Jones Walker Waechter Poitevent Carrere
& Denegre, a New Orleans based law irm, while there is a single group practice head, an
associate in reality has between four and twenty bosses. This isn’t normally a problem; direction
is provided by whoever is leading the project. Where it is a problem is when it comes to
performance appraisal-there is no one person who can do that appraisal.
When it is time to give formal feedback to employees on how well they are working, the fact
that the boss has been missing undermines the process in professional services irms. This is why
multi-rater feedback from project heads, partners and peers is essential.
- Do you use multi-rater feedback only for developmental feedback or do you
also have it afect someone’s performance appraisal and hence their
compensation and career advancement opportunities?
- Do you use upward feedback where the employees rate their bosses?
- What sort of technology do you use to make the administration fast and easy?
The First Choice: Appraisal or Development
In HR circles the common wisdom is that multi-rater feedback (particularly if it includes
upward feedback) should only be used for development. This stems from a concern
that as soon as you attach pay to the discussion, the pay issue becomes so salient that it drowns
out the feedback people are supposed to be paying attention to. This is in fact not just a multirater
issue, it is one of the classic dilemmas of all employee performance management systems:
as soon as you talk pay-whether that is done solely in the context of a boss’s assessment or
in a multi-rater assessment-thoughts about how to develop skills or improve behavior go out
the window.
At this point readers will be hoping
for a sentence to the efect, “The
solution to this classic dilemma is.”
However, if there really were a tidy,
widely applicable solution it wouldn’t
be a classic dilemma. A few companies
have two separate discussions, one
on development and one on pay, but
that means spending twice as long
working on the performance appraisal
process, covering much the same
material in each discussion.
The problem is only really avoided
if performance appraisal is an ongoing
process, not a once-a-year
event-and that is what professional
services irms should aim for. If a
professional is getting feedback
over the course of the year then
the formal appraisal process will
contain no surprises and becomes
a much less intense discussion. Of course, HR departments have always argued that employee
performance management should be an on-going process, but in most organizations that didn’t
happen because it seemed like too much work. This problem does have a solution. Employee
performance management technology makes on-going performance management much
easier. Organizations still need a culture that supports this, but the technology helps create a
breakthrough for many companies. Aside from automating the complex task of gathering multirater
feedback, for example, the technology facilitates doing reviews at the end of every project,
so everyone can get timely feedback on their performance. Technology also makes it easy for
both managers and professionals to track relevant performance information on an ongoing
basis. Sometimes this is simply a matter of copying part of an email into a performance log or
making a quick note about a client’s comments so that when the performance evaluation is
done managers don’t have to rely on memory alone.
Business Value
“Our use of multi-rater feedback has caused employees
to re-evaluate how they interact with each other and
mindful of how they do their work. Sometimes the
feedback has led to conversations that begin, “What? I
can’t believe that people feel that way about me!” But
the intent is never to be critical; it is to ofer constructive
feedback. It’s the people who are surprised who have
the most to gain from the process, and by adjusting their
behaviors they can improve their teamwork and their
own careers. A couple of people didn’t get good reviews
and they’ve taken it as a challenge and completely
reformed themselves. If the feedback had just been from
one person, their manager, they might have dismissed it.
Renee Boyce
Human Resources Manager
J.H. Findorf & Son Inc.
Circling back to the speciic choice facing professional services irms: do we use multi-rater
feedback for appraisal or just for development? The answer is to do what the culture will sustain.
Some organizations may say, “I don’t see what the problem is, we can just fold the multi-rater
feedback into the appraisal as one component and it works ine.” Other organizations will say,
“We can’t possibly do that without sowing discord and undermining the intent of giving people
helpful feedback.” Each irm must assess what works for them.
The choice is not quite so stark as it may appear. The problem of the missing boss means that
performance appraisal and subsequent compensation and promotion decisions will inevitably
depend on feedback from the people who have worked with an employee. If an employee gets
negative feedback from a multi-rater process then they should know that it does not bode well
for their career, even if it is not formally part of the appraisal process. Most professional services
irms opt to stress that the main purpose of multi-rater feedback is for development, but this is
not always the case. At Jones Walker Waechter Poitevent Carrere & Denegre the main point of the
process is to have multiple bosses appraise an associate.
The anxiety some HR people may feel about making these kinds of choices actually stems
from the fact that they are trying to solve a problem that is not theirs to solve. The design of an
employee performance management system will not solve the tension between development
feedback and appraisal any more than the design of a tennis racket will win you a match at
Wimbledon. Employee performance management is really a matter of managerial skill. The
design of the system merely provides consistency across the organization, compliance with legal
issues and hopefully a helpful framework that skilled managers appreciate.
What managers need is training in how to do performance management and particularly
how to make it an on-going process so that there are no surprises at the end of the year. It is
up to mangers, not HR, to create a climate where honest feedback is appreciated and where
employees feel that managers are
being fair to them in appraisal.
The Second Choice: Upward Feedback
The second big choice, whether
or not to use upward feedback, is a lot
simpler than the irst one. Traditionally
a boss judges employees, not vice
versa. In some organizations it is
culturally unthinkable for employees to
rate their boss, in others feedback on
how to improve is appreciated.
The problem with upward feedback
is the realistic fear that bosses will
take revenge on employees they
think are giving them bad feedback.
This is handled by making feedback
anonymous. However, in some
environments employees don’t feel safe giving upward feedback even when it is anonymous. The other concern is that if leaders are
rated by employees then they will be afraid to make unpopular decisions.
Giving Associates Helpful Feedback
“It’s in the nature of audit and tax work that our teams
change all the time. Our employees, both in audit
and tax, expect a lot of feedback so we do multi-rater
feedback quarterly. The forms are pretty simple, we
ask questions about business management, practice
development, personal productivity and so on; seven
areas in all with two to ive questions per area. It takes
someone about ten minutes to do the quarterly feedback.
We also do a more comprehensive multi-rater
feedback annually. This takes about 30 minutes per
person reviewed. The process makes our teams more
eicient because if a team member doesn’t realize they
are doing something wrong they can’t improve.”
Lizzie Rahm
Human Resources Generalist
Clark Nuber PS
There is no question that feedback from employees can be very helpful for a manager’s
development. There is also good reason for feedback from employees, whether obtained
formally or informally, to afect a manager’s performance appraisal. If employees think someone
is a lousy manager they are almost certainly right and it will hurt the irm if that person is given
more managerial responsibilities.
Again, the answer is to do what the culture of the organization will sustain. Upward feedback
is desirable, but it may not be practical. If the culture is hostile to upward feedback then the
managing director, with HR’s help, should try to change the culture, but not introduce upward
feedback before the irm is ready.
The hird Choice: Technology and Administration
Not so long ago the question would have been whether or not to use technology to
support multi-rater feedback, but the issue now is more a matter of what technology
to use. The administration of multi-rater feedback can be a real headache; much greater than it
appears at irst sight. The problem is
that the number of feedback forms to
be managed can be very large. At J.H.
Findorf & Son, a construction company
based in Madison, WI, half of the staf
have more than 10 multi-rater feedback
forms to ill out; a quarter have 25 to 35
forms to complete, and some even have
close to 50 forms. For HR, tracking these
forms and averaging the scores is very
time consuming without technology
and relatively easy when technology
is in place. Technology also makes
life easier for the people providing
multi-rater feedback, and since a
professional’s time is very valuable,
anything that cuts the time needed to spend on this is of high value.
A Focus on Development
”We use multi-rater feedback for development
not appraisal. We don’t even like to use numbers
because we don’t want it to seem like a score. We use
categories such as “exceeds at”, “sufficient for position”
and “training needed”. The implication is never that
someone is failing, only that they would benefit from
further development.”
Ileana Prado
Director of People & Facilities
PainePR
In choosing a technology the critical thing to understand is that every irm uses multi-rater
assessment a little diferently. Organizations need to test how well a given software product
handles their particular worklow and how lexible the software will be in accommodating future
needs. This can be diicult to assess. The best way to understand it is to sit with the vendor and
carefully step through the process in detail. You need not necessarily walk through the steps using the software itself. It may be easier to simply talk through each step and have the vendor
explain how the software would handle it, perhaps making sketches as necessary. Sketches help
because sometimes there is so much detail on a screen that it distracts from the core point you
are trying to learn. The trick is to spend enough time and go into enough detail that you end up
with a very speciic understanding of how each stakeholder will interact with the system and
what administrative steps you will need to take to get the output you want.
Good systems accommodate almost any kind of process and should be conigurable without
needing to go back to the vendor or relying on internal IT resources. This is important because
the assessment process that your organization uses today-may not suit you tomorrow.
The Good News
HR professionals rightly have to worry about all the issues that can arise when they
implement multi-rater feedback. But if we focus too much on diiculties then we
can lose sight of the real purpose. In a professional services irm the employees are typically
smart, ambitious, diligent people doing complex work. They need to develop a wide variety
of technical, client management, project management, personal eiciency and team skills.
Multi-rater feedback gives them the feedback they both need and crave. It can also be critical in
reinforcing the sort of team culture you are striving for. If employees get regular feedback from
their peers and managers they have an opportunity to improve. If managers are willing to accept
upward feedback then that is a great way to develop people-management skills, something
typically not covered in law school, a CPA program or other professional training.
The great advantage of technology is that it makes the administrative burden manageable,
which allows HR to spend more time on the cultural and training aspects so important in an
efective employee performance management system. Professional services irms are ultimately
based on their human capital, and investing in HR systems that make that human capital
stronger is a wise strategic choice.
Creelman Research www.creelmanresearch.com specializes in research and writing on
human-capital management. Based in Toronto, Canada, Creelman Research serves clients in
North America, Asia, Europe and Africa. The most signiicant work of Creelman Research is on
improving practice in reporting to the inancial markets about human-capital intangibles.
NOTE: The professionals quoted in this white paper are clients of Halogen Software. Halogen
Software is a leading provider of EPM software and other talent-management solutions.