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I have a small dental office, staff of 11. A couple of the staff are keen on a 360 type process for the staff. I'm not really all that excited about doing this. I have a number of concerns--1) Since it's "anonymous" what are people to do with the feedback? Someone needs to coach them through the results for them to be effective. 2) Seems to me that this type of process is only valuable if it fits into a bigger picture strategy--ie how are we going to use this to get further down the road like we want.
In general my concern is that it will be little more then an anonymous grip exercise. Any thoughts from those much more experienced then myself.
Thanks, Tim

DWElwell's picture
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I am a big fab of 360 degree reviews in theory, but haven't seen them work too well in practice. On the plus side they can be tremendously informative about how we are preceived throughout the organization.

In practice, though, the seem to be a formal way of forcing communication to occur when it doesn't normal occur. I would thing that if you have a culture of O3's, Feedback "like breathing" etc, , then you could get much of the same information it a less forced manner.

As an aside, if you do formal 360's, IMHO you HAVE to include external customers/stakeholders in some way. In your case, this would include patients and even insurance representatives. If you excluded these kinds fo folks from the analysis, you would be missing a tremendously valuabe piece of information. I.e. a person might be difficult to work with, but be well liked by your customer (or vice versa). If you do 360's, you need the complete picture.

ccleveland's picture

It sounds like there are some in your office that want to give "feedback" (probably just criticism) to others, and that they're afraid to do it without a veil of anonymity.

This seems like a trust issue. Do you think 360 degree feedback will improve trust?

CC

tg4dk's picture

CC--I think you're correct. That has me more concerned--a trust issue among staff--then any 360 eval.

Mark's picture
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Tim-

DO NOT DO THIS.

Please PM if you want to chat about this.

DO NOT.

Mark

rikt's picture

I have to agree with Mark, I don't prescribe to them at all, they can be very detrimental to your organization. Skip levels in my opinion are good when in the right context.

If you need evaluations from your customers on your sales staff, etc, come right out and ask them. Build the kind of organization where they are comfortable approaching you or someone else that can do something about it.

stewartlogan's picture

I'm sure directs and skips love 360's, since it gives them a chance to vent.

On the other hand, couldn't you receive the feedback in a form that allows for action to be taken? Such as weekly O3's and monthly skips?

Seems like a better option to build trust, get regular [i]actionable[/i] feedback, and not have anonymity (and the built in dislike that goes along with it).

thaGUma's picture

360's, nice idea but then you need to involve people....

Chris