360° Appraisal: Online Profiling System

360° Assessment

• Customised to suit your needs
• Multi-level
• E-mail driven
• Multiple jobs at the same time
• Shows job profile details available next to questionnaire
• Range of different scales
• Easy to administer - Can track progress/send reminders
• Provides a range of reports – easy to give feedback
• Online for participants
• All data is confidential

Introduction

Our consultancy business has been developing competency frameworks since 1992, including behaviours, knowledge and skills, so we understand the criteria for high performance against roles across a wide range of public and private sector organisations. We have used this understanding to help us build e-appraisal and easy to administer 360º assessment processes based on competencies frameworks. These frameworks ensure fair and objective assessment of performance against pre-defined criteria, so that you know the capability of employees across whatever group you are assessing, whether they are senior managers, Directors, or even a group of newly developing talent. You can confidently use this information for development, training, progression, career development, promotion, succession, resourcing, selection, etc.
 

	We often start by creating a competencies framework to make sure that we have the criteria for success and behaviours that you value built into the 360º assessment process from the beginning. That way you can be sure that the assessment process is going to highlight those abilities that have value in your organisation, rather than taking an off the shelf questionnaire. Of course we have an existing question bank for most of the key competencies you might want to look at, e.g. leadership, teamwork, communication skills, etc., but many clients want a bespoke approach that includes issues like contribution to Board meetings, corporate governance, or other issues that are particular to their needs. Once we have an agreed competency framework, with measures of increasing levels of the key competencies, we then work with our client to profile the job, or several jobs, to set out the criteria for what good performance looks like in terms of behaviours but also possibly several relevant technical knowledge and skills. OPS software can have many different frameworks and skills, but the OPS 360º job profile will only pick the questions for the assessment that are relevant to the key competencies and levels of competency set for a particular job.
	When we use a 360º assessment approach, the whole process is driven by email, the jobholder receives an invitation to participate in the 360º assessment process, with a hot link to the website. They assess themselves by rating their performance against a series of statements or questions, typically around 6 statements per behavioural competency. Each statement has its own comments box for the jobholder to record supporting information or evidence. The statements are drawn from a bank of questions and so can be determined by the profile of a job, allowing you to assess each jobholder against the appropriate competencies and competency levels for their job. For each participant in the 360º assessment process you can have any number of contributors assessing. They will also receive an email inviting them to contribute to the process, and will assess using the same statements as the jobholder and will be given the opportunity to record any comments against each statement, as well as make overall comments. OPS can have a copy of the jobholder’s Job Description available for viewing as part of the 360º assessment; responses from contributors are likely to be more accurate and considered if they know what the role and responsibilities are. OPS 360º software also allows you to combine the questionnaire approach for behaviours with a simpler profile rating for skills. Because of the flexibility of our software you can conduct 360º assessments for different groups of people at different levels of the organisation at the same time. OPS links the review type to the Job profile, so a number of 360º processes and other assessments can be conducted at the same time.
		OPS 360º software collates the scores from different contributors and produces averages for different groups, so that you can compare self assessment with line manager, peer group, subordinates, stakeholders, etc. The software tracks who has been invited to contribute and can send email reminders, it has full reporting and an easy to understand feedback report. Our software then allows participants to continue their review process by looking at their development needs and creating an on-line Personal Development Plan (PDP), so that they can address any of the areas identified by their graphical Skill Gaps Analysis. OPS electronic PDP software links to a database of training or development activities, so participants can build the content with confidence. We can also build browser links to any web-based source of development and training materials, from outside suppliers, training companies, professional institutes, universities, etc. The PDP is also linked to our Training Management Module, for ease of booking people on to training courses. Indeed participants can also integrate the 360º assessment with all the other features of OPS, for objective setting, Continuing Professional Development, Career Development, Succession, etc.