Employees' ability to engage or communicate without revealing their identities or actions has remained a divisive element of every workplace. At first glance, most might consider anonymity as a hindrance to accountability and collaboration, and rightly so; however, its importance in the workplace can be seen through several aspects, particularly feedback.

In truth, a certain degree of anonymity is needed for full transparency in the workplace. Aside from fostering constructive feedback, anonymity remains crucial for gaining insights about employees, the work culture and other internal factors that make an organization work. This is where 360-degree feedback software comes to play.

A 360-degree feedback software is a specialized tool organizations use to streamline the collection and analysis of feedback from multiple sources concerning various aspects of the workplace. These aspects could be an individual's performance, skills, behaviors or working environment.

As the name suggests, 360-degree feedback software facilitates feedback collection from all directions, including superiors, peers, subordinates and other external stakeholders like customers. With this solution, organizations can comprehensively assess individual abilities and areas of improvement.

How Does 360-Feedback Software Work?

A 360-feedback software is an indispensable resource for managers seeking personal and team development. It actively encourages employee feedback, offering a comprehensive understanding of how an employer or employee's actions are perceived by their coworkers.

According to Forbes, over 86% of Fortune 500 companies employ 360-degree feedback as a foundational aspect of their leadership development process. This statistic highlights how important these platforms are in creating action plans, identifying improvement areas and enabling individuals to track and measure their progress over time.

A 360-feedback software fosters time-efficient changes that positively impact employee engagement and organizational productivity. Some benefits of this tool include:

Improve Collaboration

A 360-degree feedback software provides all organization levels with a collaborative system to understand everyone's strengths and weaknesses.

Comprehensive Assessment

This tool provides a broader perspective of each worker's performance by collecting input from various sources, leading to a more comprehensive evaluation.

Creates Anonymity

Anonymity is a significant element of 360-feedback software platforms, providing employees with the safety to give honest feedback.

Improves Transparency

Implementing a 360-feedback platform enhances workplace transparency by facilitating honest and anonymous feedback. This allows workers to receive unbiased input from others who fully understand their roles and challenges.

Identifying Patterns

By highlighting trends and recurring themes in feedback, organizations can proactively address some issues within the system or acknowledge and reward high-performing individuals.

Employee Development

360-degree feedback software platforms can also be used to pinpoint skill gaps and find a way to develop training for these lacking competencies.

Features of 360-Degree Feedback Software

As organizations aim to enhance employee development and foster a culture of continuous growth, there is a need to implement practical tools across various organizational aspects. 360-degree feedback platforms emerge as vital assets, providing innovative features and solutions for achieving these objectives. Some key features of these platforms include:

Questionnaire Creation

These platforms allow administrators to create customized questionnaires or select pre-built templates. Questionnaires include several competency-based questions that assess different aspects of an individual's performance.

Feedback Collection

The best platforms incorporate a feature that sends automated invitations to selected raters, requesting them to complete the assessment online. With this feature, raters can provide feedback by responding to questionnaires through scales or comments.

Integrations

360-degree feedback software works best with the Objects and Key Results (OKR) framework, development paths and engagement surveys. As such, these platforms must integrate perfectly with these tools and frameworks.

Scalability

For those working in a large organization, 360-feedback tools provide a comprehensive performance management platform that possesses the capability to effectively handle performance management on a significant scale.

Rater Selection

This platform allows administrators to select who can provide feedback. The selection could include peers, supervisors, subordinates and sometimes, self-assessments. The identity of each rater is kept confidential to improve honesty and unbiased feedback.

5 Best 360 Degree Feedback Software 2023

Every forward-thinking company has most likely heard of the benefits of 360-feedback software. However, to build a strong feedback culture in your organization, it's crucial to pick a platform that fits your company's environment and provides functionalities that suit your needs. In line with this, we've created a list of the five best software solutions for 360-degree feedback and performance management.

ClearCompany
ClearCompany

ClearCompany

ClearCompany is an integrated platform that provides essential HR functionalities, including workforce planning, recruitment, onboarding and performance management. This platform offers comprehensive HR features which enable organizations to streamline their human resources processes.

The ClearCompany platform provides a simple and user-friendly interface, empowering administrators to effortlessly collect and consolidate feedback from different sources. It also leverages 360 reviews to offer employees an all-encompassing perspective on various aspects, from work style to reliability, teamwork, communication and areas of development.

ClearCompany's comprehensive feedback approach fosters a culture of self-awareness and collaboration. Furthermore, the platform goes beyond providing software solutions; employees can also access expert advice and best practices from experienced professionals, enhancing HR strategies and cultivating talent success within the workforce.

AssessTEAM
AssessTEAM

AssessTEAM

The AssessTEAM platform is a cloud-based 360-feedback performance management software that over 2,000 small and medium-sized organizations use. This platform provides an array of professionally developed questionnaire templates for organizations to collect feedback from different sources. It also provides the option to customize questions tailored to your specific needs.

Another significant feature of the AssessTEAM platform is its seamless integration with Google Workplace and Microsoft Office 365, making it easier to set up and collect feedback. AssessTEAM also features all-inclusive pricing, which makes it an ideal solution for small and medium-sized businesses seeking simple, cost-effective performance management software.

Effy
Effy

Effy

Effy AI is an AI-powered 360-degree feedback software designed for swift and efficient employee reviews. This platform addresses the needs of organizations in the early stages of feedback collection or those conducting occasional reviews. Effy AI platform provides several features that make it stand out as one of the best solutions today.

First, organizations can benefit from its ready-to-use templates and the intuitive wizard in setting up 360-feedback quickly with fully customizable options. These options include review roles, anonymous and non-anonymous feedback, process timeline and automated notifications.

Effy's AI-generated reports save administrators time by summarizing feedback, creating development plans based on input and eliminating hours of mundane work. This enables more frequent reviews and enhances the value delivered to employee growth.

Another innovative feature of this platform is its instant feedback exchanges, which empower ongoing feedback and recognition, eliminating the need to wait for scheduled reviews. With this timely feedback loop, organizations can identify achievements and make timely adjustments to work.

Furthermore, Effy AI provides a flexible and transparent pricing model that makes it accessible for organizations of all sizes. You can start with this platform for free and experience its features and benefits without any upfront cost. This flexible pricing model allows companies to test the platform and assess its effectiveness in addressing their needs before committing.

Trakstar
Trakstar

Trakstar

Trackstar is one of the industry-leading talent development platforms for human resources used by many top companies. This platform stands out with its comprehensive 360-degree review capabilities, fostering impactful conversations that drive change, engagement and retention. It creates a culture of consistent improvement in the workplace through meaningful and comprehensive feedback.

While the Trakstar software might be remarkably user-friendly, it does provide effective solutions from automation to pre-generated templates, an anonymous mode and seamless integration with other platforms. Regarding Trakstar's extensive integration capabilities, the platform works seamlessly with several popular platforms, such as ADP, Slack, Zoom, Shopify, Quickbooks, Google Calendar and more.

Spidergap
Spidergap

Spidergap

Spidergap is a highly-rated cloud-based 360-degree feedback platform meticulously designed to address the needs of businesses of all sizes. This software provides a versatile platform, allowing organizations to choose from pre-built templates or fully tailor their questionnaires to contain competencies and behaviors that are more important to the organization.

Spidergap also works with hundreds of HR directors, managers and employees to design relevant reports that are easy to understand and use. This platform also provides expert advice to help organizations every step of the way, including an end-to-end checklist, support from 360 feedback experts and reviewing potential employee impact.

Conclusion

Having gained insight into the top 360-degree feedback options available in the market, it's best to explore which features appeal to you the most before selecting one. By reflecting on the possibilities and considering which aspects align with your organization's goals and needs, you can embrace a continuous feedback model, enrich the employee experience and nurture a culture of growth and development.

The dynamic nature of the modern workplace requires organizations to harness the power of these innovative feedback solutions to foster a more engaged and thriving workforce. Therefore, businesses can begin the journey towards an empowered and productive workforce by implementing one of these solutions.