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PHP adds 360 degree feedback function to online development tools

Peter Honey Publications (PHP) has added a 360 degree feedback function to its range of online development tools. According to Dr Peter Honey, PHP's managing director: "Feedback is the life-blood of learning and development and yet, in most workplaces, people do not get enough feedback.

The lack of feedback tends to deprive people of three basic rights - to know what is expected of them, how they are doing and what they need to do to improve or become even better."

"Feedback - invited or uninvited, welcome or unwelcome - always gives you information about how other people perceive your behaviour," Honey continued. "It is tempting to dismiss perceptions as subjective - which they are - but perceptions are as close as we get to reality.

"Your perceptions of other people's behaviour are as real for you as their perceptions of your behaviour are for them!

"So, unless people are deliberately trying to mislead you, it is always worth finding out their version of the real you. Indeed not to do so, leaves you at the mercy of your perceptions of yourself - with all the perils of self-delusion."

360 degree feedback was first used in the early 1970s in the heavy electronics industry in the old Soviet Union. In the late '70s, David Clutterbuck introduced the idea into Western Europe and, at roughly the same time, the idea was being experimented with in the United States. It was welcomed as an enlightened improvement to 'top-down' systems of appraisal and assessment.

The process involves inviting feedback - perceptions of an individuals performance - from a number of people. These people might be the person's manager, along with colleagues, including direct reports and peers. These perceptions are then contrasted with the individual's own to help prioritise their development needs.

When it comes to providing feedback to someone who has completed one of PHP's range of 40 online development tools, Honey commented: "If you are the person's manager, then your responses to the questionnaire will be attributed to you by name. If you are a colleague, your responses will be anonymous - the feedback will be based on averages derived from the perceptions of at least three colleagues."

PHP's online development tools are designed to provide data for managers and coaches who want to help people firm up relevant personal development plans, as well as help people to decide what and how to learn.

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