360 Degree Assessments

Client Dilemma

What do you do if you are already the industry leader and one of the world’s most respected and admired companies? According to our client, a multi-billion dollar, privately held, family manufacturing company, you get better! This was the challenge our client recently provided to us.

BDD’s Action Plan

The first thing that the Business Directives team suggested was a series of one-on-one interviews with the leadership team to identify future organizational issues and profile the skills and leadership needed of specific employee groups. A small gap analysis was conducted to align those skills with the business units’ strategic initiatives. Next, the team prioritized the areas on which they wanted to focus and refined their core competencies. The consensus among the leadership team was that if they were going to move their organization beyond the next level they would need to leverage the strengths of each employee and challenge them to identify “stretch goals” and then develop a plan to reach those goals. BDD suggested the creation of a 360-degree assessment tool. After gaining insight into the special needs of leadership and employees, the BDD consulting team was able to custom design a 360-degree assessment to suit the organization’s objectives. Senior management requested that the final assessment tool be easy to use, have on-line capabilities, fit their desired organizational culture, measure their specific core competencies and include open-ended questions. The survey that was developed measured the competencies in both leadership and employee groups, and took into consideration multi-levels of participants including peers, superiors, subordinates, distributors, internal customers and external customers. One unique feature the consultants developed for the 360-degree tool was the ability to use unique passwords and allow participants to begin the survey and come back to it a later time to complete (thus exit in and out of the software) due to the busy schedules of the employees.

End Result

After the assessments were finished, data was tabulated and presented to the employees in an easy-to-read report. The reports highlighted each employee’s areas of strengths and places they could develop, and how they reflected the organizations core competencies. Each department also received a summary score, benchmark and department report comparing all the employees in their group to the rest of the employees in the organization. Group training was conducted to help interpret the results and facilitate the outlining of individual and organizational development plans that each employee would be preparing, based on their information. Individuals in leadership were also given coaching to help them more easily adapt to the findings and further develop effective leadership skills. As a result of the findings, the organization was able to create management-training programs to specifically address the survey competencies and future goals. This was the first step in an ongoing effort to challenge each employee to move beyond their current capabilities and at the same time move the organization to a new level.