Google Uses Peer Reviews for Performance appraisal

Google schedules their performance reviews twice a year -- one major one at the end of the year and a smaller one mid-year.  This answer is based on my experience as a Google engineer, and the performance review process may differ slightly for other positions.

Each review consists of a self-assessment, a set of peer reviews, and if you're applying for a promotion, reasons for why should be promoted to the next level.  Each review component is submitted via an online tool.  Around performance review time, it's not uncommon to see many engineers taking a day or more just to write the reviews through the tool.

In the self-assessment, you summarize your major accomplishments and contributions since the last review.  You're also asked to describe your strengths and areas for improvement; typically you'd frame them with respect to the job expectations described by your career ladder.  For example, if you're a senior engineer, you might write about your strengths being the tech lead of  your current project.

For peer reviews, employees are expected to choose around 3-8 peers (fellow engineers, product managers, or others that can comment on their work) to write their peer reviews.  Oftentimes, managers will also assign additional individuals to write peer reviews for one of their reports, particularly newer or younger reports who may be less familiar with the process.

Peers comment on your projects and contributions, on your strengths, and on areas for improvement.  The peer reviews serve three purposes:

• They allow your peers to give you direct feedback on your code quality, your teamwork, etc., and to give direct feedback to your manager that you don't feel comfortable directly sharing with the employee.
• Along with the self-assessment, they feed into your manager's decision regarding your performance rating, which determines your yearly bonus multiplier.
• If you apply for a promotion, the peer reviews also become part of your promotion application packet.

An additional part of the peer review is indicating a list of engineers that are working below the level of the peer and a list of engineers that are working above the level of the peer.  These factor into a total ordering of engineers within a team and are used to determine cutoffs for bonuses and promotions.

If you're applying for a promotion during a performance review cycle, you're given an additional opportunity to explain why you should be promoted.  A key part to a strong application is explaining with specific details and examples how you're achieving and contributing based on the expectations of the next level in the job ladder.

Source- Quora

For More information visit www.dhung.com

Mistakes of 360 Degree Feedback

Hi All,

Ill just quickly brief you about the mistakes that people make while administering this method:

• Its not a substitute for managing poor performers - There is no substitute for direct communication and 360 feedback is no exception bad performers need to be told directly that they are not performing. there are no shortcuts to this.
• You should not use it because it sounds cool - This feedback must be used for a purpose - awareness. Many Consultants would refer you this method because it is new , but before diving always run a pilot test and assess whether it is a right fit for your organization
• No proper branding - The process must be communicated to all the involved parties lest it is not taken seriously. The Top level management must be involved in branding the process for the organization
• Knowing their strengths and weakness isn't enough , people need to be given sufficient aid to act on this knowledge which would then lead to tangible results in the future. And this brings us to the final point which is
•  It is a process and it takes time. It cannot be completed in a short amount of time and you cannot expect immediate results

Benefits of 360 Degree Feedback Assessment

Normally Managers give feedback to their subordinates and Often this is based on the team's performance rather than the individual's own performance. And if the person receiving the feedback doesn't agree with the manager then the team morale takes a dive.

360 Feedback is like trying to find your place in an organization , the more directions you get the faster you find and reach your destination.  

So what do you get from a 360 feedback ?

• More chance of feedback acceptance since it comes from multiple people.(One person can get it wrong but all the people you know at work can't get it wrong at the same time!)
• 360 focus on behavior rather than recent performances, thus it causes a long term behavioral change 
• Want to know something you don't know about ? Go 360! People love to know about themselves, so bye bye appraisal apprehensions! 
• It helps you identify high potential employees easily
• In the management cadre the best employees are the fast learners, so this type of feedback is very effective at the management cadre  levels
• It is a very effective tool to communicate a shift in companies HR policies which keep constantly changing due to the shift in company's strategies
• Employees feel important - it shows how ones own performance correlates with the companies performance
• Regular feedback enables open communication and creates high performing teams, once you an environment built based on trust then your employees will stick with you no matter what- This translates to huge decreases in attrition rates.

Like to implement 360 degree feedback in your organization?
Visit the link below for help: 
http://dhung360.blogspot.com/2014/04/dhung-corporate-portfolio.html

 

Dhung Corporate Portfolio

Hi Corporate Citizens! 
Kindly Check out our Product portfolio!

How to evaluate 360 Feedback Products

The internet revolution has caused 360 Feedback products to flourish online. Several companies have now jumped into this business and the competition is getting heavy.

In India most of the Human Resources departments are often understaffed and over taxed. Due to this HR managers do not have the time to implement an in house 360 feedback. This is where consultants and consultancy companies come in. They provide the basic platform on which the feedback can be customized according to the company and executed with ease.

There are basically two types of feedback services available online:

• As a product: which give you the platform and make you implement the feedback - this means that they provide the infrastructure, a basic set of questions and products. 
• Pros:  
• Company confidential information need not be revealed to the Consultants
• Low Cost of product - one time cost and very minimal maintenance costs
• Cons: 
• Implementation load again falls on the HR department - this may sometimes outweigh the low product cost
• Sometimes HR department may not have high level expertise that come with consultants who have had experience from multiple companies and even industries.This may act against them while implementing feedback as they may choose wrong competencies which would again lead to improper measurement of the employees performance.
• As a service: The consultants implement the entire feedback, they analyze the company and the industry in which it is present. they choose the questions for your questionnaire and provide the implementation for you. They also would ensure tactics for proper follow up with employees and ensure there is a performance increase. 
• Pros:
• Expertise of consultants is properly leveraged
• Almost no administration involved as they take care of the entire implementation of the produce
• Cons
• Company confidential information may need to be revealed
• Cost of purchasing license per employee may be high 

What to expect from Vendors:

1. Provide standard template questions from which you can choose from 
2. Customization of your questionnaire
3. Allow feedback providers to add additional comments
4. They will automatically generate reports and do not require any data entry of feedback items unless you need to use some paper-based feed backs for certain individuals
5. They will allow you to customize your rating scales and define them as you wish
6. They will allow you have your respondents provide feedback directly on the Internet

You can look at a presentation of a service from Dhung called Dhung 360 feedback - This service is provided by  consultants who have HR experience of over 10 years for various firms. 


Presentation link: http://prezi.com/_rkwflc5niuv/dhung-360/
Other services Link: http://www.dhung.com/services

Based on : Evaluating Your Options By N. Elizabeth Fried, Ph.D., CCP

What is it ?

Greetings Corporate Citizens ! I am Dhung Monk!

I'm sure you would have heard about feedback. Its simply the process of getting comments on how well you did. You can get this from your friends,colleagues teachers etc or you can even give it to yourself. It is very important for your development.

Corporates citizens like you and me get feedback regularly from our managers and in most cases this is the only person from whom we get feedback. Often this may not be correct because, well ...its only one person's point of view.

So consider this proposition!  What if you could get feedback from multiple people ? Wouldn't it be much more accurate ? Wouldn't it be very fair ? The Answer is Yes!

To the employees, you get fair feedback because its from multiple people, no discrimination, no bias, no appraisal fights with your manager because what comes out is what everyone in your team thinks of you, not just your manager.

To the managers out there, you would also get to know how employees behave when you are not there. Most employees behave well around their managers but when the cat is away , you know how it ends. So its important to know how they behave and perform when you are not there and the best way to do this is get feedback from his/her peers! You also get a peace of mind knowing that your employee is not going to fight with you because he/she doesn't like it. You also get to take feedback on whether you are a good manager or not. 

for more feedback related questions and answers , Visit Dhung.com