Best 360 feedback tools 

Performance management is not always straightforward, and it can take a lot of time and effort to put together, but one thing you need to remember is that avoiding bias and taking every aspect of your team member’s performance is crucial. 

So how do you make that happen? That’s where a 360 feedback tool comes into play. In this guide, we’ve put together a list of some of the best on the market. 

Why should you trust our guide on 360 feedback software? 

After all, it may seem a little strange that we’re writing a guide on 360 feedback software when we also provide this feature within Charlie. 

As Product Manager, I spend a good amount of my time researching our competitors and putting together comparison documents to find out how we can improve our features. 

‍So instead of just filing my research into another Google Drive, I thought it’d be better to simply share it with our content team and with our customers. So here you go, we’re not saying we’re the best for everyone, but we’ve definitely built our features for small businesses, so if you’re one, check out Charlie. 

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It’s also good to note that, although other websites claim to be more independent because they’re not selling a product, they do earn a commission on the links added onto their 360 feedback software guide. Here, we don’t earn anything, but we do have 360 feedback software up our sleeve and we’re very transparent about it. 

How did I pick these 360 feedback software and how should you pick yours?

Before going into the research process, I first got in touch with our in-house HR experts Yasmin Lord-Pottinger and Luula Abdulkhadir to understand what people in the real world look for when it comes to 360 feedback software. 

‍They’ve both worked with many small businesses, whether that’s in house or as contractors, and therefore understand the needs of different companies. 

‍It was a good starting point for me, so we sat down and had a chat about which software made the most sense and what they’d heard in day-to-day conversations, events or on forums. 

Once I had that list ready, I set out to understand what HR professionals, founders and CEOs looked for when they wanted to put together a 360 feedback review process. It came down to 5 elements I will list below, and perhaps the ones you should look out for the most if you’re a small business.

1. Ease of use

The first aspect small business leaders seem to care about is ease of use. Whether a software has many features or not, what they find really important is how easy it will be to navigate and to train their team on it. Ideally, they don’t want any training happening, but they just want it to be easy enough so people get it straight away and they can set up their 360 feedback review system in one go. 

2. Pricing

For small business leaders or people responsible for HR, pricing plays a massive role. Even though they want to implement processes and have a 360 feedback software, the budget constraints are real so they may need to pull back on their needs if it’s too expensive.

3. Anonymous responses

Surprisingly, the anonymous feedback is a great portion of what people worry about and they want to make sure their team members won’t have access to the peer feedback without being allowed to, so 360 feedback software they pick needs to have that option. 

4. Customisable

Asking the right questions and the ones they want is an aspect many small business leaders want integrated within the platform. They don’t want to just use ready-made templates, but they want to have the opportunity to write their own questions so that it aligns with their company goals. 

5. Customer support

The support received by customers makes all the difference. If there’s an issue, small businesses really value having someone on hand to solve it and it will really mattern to them to avoid going to a competitor.

6. Reviews

More than even the product pages presented by a product, what people check out are the reviews available online. We’re not talking here about a deep dive online, but simply an overall assessment of the company’s reputation which is super important before picking your product.

So are you ready to pick your own 360 feedback software? We’ve put together a blank sheet on this page where you can compare all software against this criteria. Download it now. 

Other 360 feedback software to check out

Although I’ve not done any research on the below, these were on my radar as some of the best 360 feedback tools according to what our in-house experts told me: 

• SurveySparrow
  
• Primalogik
• Lumus360
• Lattice
• Leapsome

How to create your own 360 feedback tool without having to spend money? 

If you’re not keen on using an automated tool to save time when putting together your 360 performance reviews, that’s ok – perhaps you currently don’t have the resources to invest. If that’s your case, here’s how you should go about it: 

• Build the questions all by yourself 
  
• Send the questions to each relevant employee 
  
• Link the feedback to each performance review 
  
• Make sure you keep track of everything 
  
• Ensure everyone sends a response on time 
  

That can be a lot of work, but still feasible – we’ve also put together a 360 feedback template to help you do this without having to come up with the questions yourself. Feel free to use it! 

FAQs for 360 feedback software 

What is a 360 feedback tool?

A 360 feedback tool is software that automates the 360 degree feedback process so that it’s less time-consuming, admin-heavy, and more consistent.

‍Also known as peer feedback, 360 reviews, or peer reviews, 360 feedback is when colleagues seek and receive feedback on their performance from each other to better understand their strengths and areas for employee development. 360 employee feedback results in a fairer and more rounded understanding of individual performance, as the different perspectives provide a more holistic view and help to combat manager bias.

What else do you need when running a small business? 

Running a small business means you’ll need a lot of other tools to make sure it’s going well. Below, we’ve included some helpful links you can have a look at: 

• Our collection of HR templates and HR policies 
  
• Our software for small businesses 
  
• Our guide on the best leave management systems 
  
• Our guide on best HRIS
  
• Our hub for small businesses and startups 
  

5 reasons to invest in a 360 feedback software

1- Removes the admin 

By removing all the admin involved in traditional performance reviews, a 360 feedback tool makes it very easy to automatically collect feedback.

360 feedback systems usually come with survey templates, which allow your Human Resources team to save hours of time they’d traditionally spend crafting the right feedback questionnaire.

An automated feedback workflow also allows you to keep your feedback safe in one platform, to automate feedback collection and create feedback reports — so all information is safe under one roof.

2- Gives a holistic view of performance 

Having just one person evaluating your performance can sometimes be frustrating – your manager will not necessarily be the person you work with on a day-to-day basis, so what happens when they need to understand how you’ve performed? 

It’s simple: by giving the opportunity to coworkers to weigh in in on people’s performance reviews, it’ll make it much easier. With a 360 feedback tool, you just need to select the people you want to hear from, send them the survey and wait to hear back.

3- Promotes self-awareness 

Performance reviews are not fixated in time, they need to evolve depending on where your company is at. 

It’s easy to have blind spots when it comes to your own processes, so it’s good to build perspective for everyone. 

With a 360 feedback tool, your team members get the opportunity to self-reflect more – by giving feedback on others, it gives them more awareness about their own performance and development.

4- Is not just about numbers 

A lot of 360 feedback reviews have been working with ratings – the problem with this approach is that ratings don’t really tell you anything about how someone is doing. It can be really confusing and demotivating for your team members.

That’s where 360 feedback tool focuses on useful feedback and pertinent questions so you get the feedback you need to evaluate your team member’s performance. 

5- Focuses on continuous feedback  

360 feedback tools are not the only way to get feedback running through your whole company – the best way to ensure this is to make sure to include continuous feedback in every aspect of your work. 

Of course, 360 feedback tools and reviews will be an extra way of doing this as it will get people used to stop being uncomfortable about saying what they think about others.