Employee performance reviews are a critical component of people management and employee development. You can’t effectively improve an employee’s future performance without first evaluating their past performance.
Many companies recognize the interconnected nature of modern workplaces and the resulting importance of getting insights from not just a direct supervisor but from an employee’s teammates, subordinates, and colleagues throughout the organization. This is known as 360-degree feedback or 360 feedback for short.
While 360 feedback has become more popular in many organizations, it does have some drawbacks that organizations should consider before implementing it on a large scale.
Pros of 360 Feedback
The overall strategy of 360 feedback is to provide a range of perspectives from those who work for, manage, collaborate with, rely on, or support the person being reviewed. The idea is that this comprehensive approach provides a more thorough evaluation than the one-dimensional, top-down perspective that comes with traditional direct-manager reviews.
Valuable Insight for Leaders
360 feedback is seen as particularly useful for leaders who have a high degree of independence from their direct supervisors and whose work has impacts throughout the organization.
“When thoughtfully applied, [360 feedback] gives leaders a window into how others perceive them,” says Cindy Kravitz, PhD, Executive Coach and Business Strategist. “This helps them better understand their strengths and uncover areas for growth.”
“360 feedback offers a unique, multidimensional view, giving leaders insight into how they’re truly showing up in areas like communication, decision-making, and relationship-building,” Kravitz continues. “This is especially crucial as leaders rise in their careers, where honest and constructive feedback can be harder to come by.”
Uncovering Blind Spots
Soliciting feedback from a variety of angles also helps identify challenges and opportunities that a top-down review may miss.
“It can uncover undetected management issues,” says Amanda Vernon, senior HR specialist with Insperity, a national HR services company. “Using 360-degree feedback for leadership creates a space for employees to provide insights they might not otherwise volunteer and can be a powerful accountability tool for leaders.”
Improve Culture
Some experts believe 360 feedback can also help improve corporate culture. “One benefit we’ve seen from this kind of feedback is that it can improve the overall culture and work environment in your organization,” says Matt Erhard, Managing Partner at Summit Search Group.
“People may have critiques or complaints about the way their colleagues perform their work that they don’t feel comfortable sharing unprompted,” Erhard says. “By providing a forum for them to pass along their thoughts, you can address these concerns and make the team more cohesive overall.”
Cons of 360 Feedback
While there are certainly plenty of benefits with 360 feedback, there are some downsides as well. Indeed, the experts we spoke with highlighted several drawbacks to 360 feedback.
Quality of Feedback
The most consistent critique we heard was that 360 feedback is often less useful, for a variety of reasons, than feedback from an employee’s direct manager.
“While valuable, 360 feedback can be subjective as it’s often shaped by individual biases, team dynamics, and cultural differences,” says Kravitz. “Common pitfalls include overemphasis on negative feedback, vague input, and feedback fatigue. Leaders may also face inconsistency in feedback standards or privacy concerns.”
To mitigate these potential issues, Kravitz suggests that organizations train feedback providers to offer objective input, that they establish clear criteria, and that they ensure anonymity. “Further, contextualizing 360 data alongside other metrics and providing follow-up support enables leaders to make meaningful changes,” Kravitz says.
Vernon agrees. “A variety of reviewers is essential for constructive feedback,” she says. “A personal grudge against an employee may surface rather than work-performance feedback.” Vernon adds that the anonymity that usually accompanies 360 feedback is a double-edged sword. “While anonymity can encourage honesty,” she says, “it might also lead to less constructive feedback if respondents feel they can be overly critical without accountability.”
But bias can cut the other way as well, Erhard points out. “On the other side, colleagues may be hesitant to give constructive criticism to coworkers they personally like, so you may not get the fully honest feedback you’re hoping for.”
Time Commitment
Adding several more sources of feedback to the review process also takes additional time and effort, something many organizations are not willing or able to commit to in an already time-consuming review system.
“Involving multiple parties in a review requires a lot of work, follow-up, and documentation,” Vernon points out. “Plus, they can be cumbersome to manage.”
“From an administrative standpoint, conducting a 360-degree review does take more effort and time, and can be an organizational headache for larger companies especially,” agrees Erhard. “I recommend putting a solid system in place to gather, organize, and distribute this feedback before you implement this approach, and to leave yourself more time to conduct the review than you think you’ll need, especially when you’re first starting.”
Best Practices When Using 360 Feedback
Companies can leverage the benefits of 360 feedback while mitigating the downsides by implementing some basic best practices. Here are several suggested by the experts we spoke with.
Use for Mid-Year or Continuous Feedback, but Maybe Not Annual Review
“In general, the practice of 360 feedback is an excellent one. However, it is more useful when this feedback is solicited during a mid-year conversation or throughout the year rather than during a year-end performance evaluation process,” says Tonushree Mondal, Founder and Owner of Tonushree Mondal Consulting LLC. “There is a much higher tendency for biases to get amplified during a year-end process because the person giving feedback is more aware of the impact on the other person’s performance rating and bonus and tends to be more lenient and less constructive in their feedback.”
Follow-Up
“Uncovering underlying or undetected issues is a pro; however, once these are uncovered, it is critical to follow up on the issue,” Vernon says. “Therefore, this is a pro and a con since you uncover issues or challenges but create a more involved review process.”
Training the Reviewers
As we noted above, not everyone who has insights on a person being reviewed is good at reviewing. Training everyone involved in providing 360 feedback can help generate more useful responses.
“To make 360-degree feedback work, it’s critical to train everyone involved in giving constructive, objective feedback,” says Sue Belton, a leadership coach and author. “I recommend using clear criteria to guide responses, focusing on behaviors and their impact, rather than on personalities.”
Feedback Coupled with Development
“Feedback should always be coupled with one-on-one coaching to help leaders process the input and put it into action,” says Belton. “In my work, I’ve seen that leaders gain the most from 360s when the process is developmental rather than evaluative—encouraging growth rather than ‘scoring points.’ ”
360-degree feedback offers a valuable, multidimensional approach to employee performance reviews, providing insights from a range of perspectives that can benefit both leaders and teams. When implemented thoughtfully, it can help uncover blind spots, strengthen corporate culture, and offer leaders a clearer view of their impact. However, potential drawbacks—such as bias, feedback quality, and time demands—mean organizations should weigh its challenges carefully.
By applying best practices like continuous feedback, training reviewers, and coupling feedback with development support, companies can maximize the benefits of 360 feedback while minimizing its pitfalls.
Lin Grensing-Pophal is a Contributing Editor at HR Daily Advisor.