NCJ Number
211402
Journal
Law Enforcement Technology Volume: 32 Issue: 9 Dated: September 2005 Pages: 148,150,152-156,158
Date Published
September 2005
Length
8 pages
Annotation
This article describes how a computerized "360" employee performance-assessment system works and reports on a study that examined its effectiveness with various types of operations, including policing.
Abstract
Leadership Software Corporation of Nyack, NY, studied the 360 assessments of five organizations (three police departments) over 5-years (January 1999-September 2004). All of the participating organizations conducted performance assessments with the aid of one or both of two software tools from the company: Quality Coach/360 (QC/360) and Survey/360 (S/360). QC/360 is a continuous feedback tool designed to establish performance expectations through a performance plan for each employee. Throughout the performance tracking period, the coach and other raters refer to this plan to make performance observations and provide feedback. Observations and feedback are entered into the software's Coaching Journal database, along with performance incident ratings. The system automatically compiles periodic reviews from these entries. S/360 is a more traditional 360 assessment tool that relies on a questionnaire based on performance requirements. Under this system, an employee's raters go online periodically to respond to the questionnaire and provide feedback and performance ratings, from which an assessment is later compiled. Both software types permit qualitative and quantitative measures of performance. The study's comparison of year-to-year performance ratings with both tools found that the average ratings with QC/360 were consistently lower than with S/360, apparently because QC/360 enters performance ratings for a specific event; and S/360 ratings involve the employee's average performance over many events. This article provides examples of typical feedback in both types of systems to illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of each. The overall conclusion of the study is that 360 systems provide more efficient, objective, and realistic performance assessments than traditional supervisor, paper-based reviews; and they show continuous improvement to a greater degree than prior performance review methods.