performance. Peers and even subordinates are being asked to take part in the
process, and employees are participating in their own evaluations. One survey
found about half of executives and 53 percent of employees now have input into
their performance evaluations.ss As you might expect, self-evaluatio.r$ ofte.,
suffer from overinflated assessment and self-serving bias, and they seldom agree
with superiors' ratings.86 They are probably better suited to developmental than
evaluative purposes and should be combined with other sources of information
to reduce rating errors.
In most situations, it is highly advisable to use multiple sources of ratings.
Any individual perforrnance ra[ing may say as much about the rater as about
the person being evaluated. By averaging across raters, we can obtain a more
reliable, unbiased, and accurate performance evaluation.
Another popular approach to performance evaluation is 360degree evaluations.
d' These provide performance feedback from the employee's full circle
of daily contacts, frorn mailroom workers to customers to bosses to peers
(see Exhibit 17-2). The number of appraisals can be as few as 3 or 4 or as many
as 25; most organizations collect 5 to l0 per employee.
What's the appeal of the 360degree appraisal? By relying on feedback from
co-workers, customers, and subordinates, organizations are hoping to give
everyone a sense of participation in the review process and gain more accurate
readings on employee performance.
Evidence on the effectivenbss of the 360-degree evaluation is mixed,88 It provides
employees with a wider perspective on their performance, but many organizations
don't spend the time to train evaluators in giving constructive criticism.
Some 360-degree evaluations allow employees to choose the peers and subordinates
who evaluate them, which can artificially inflate feedback. It's also diffrcult
to reconcile disagreements between rater groups. There is clear evidence that