360 degree performance reviews

Like most organisations, at Elephant Property, we conduct performance reviews of our team every six months. We assess what each team member can improve on going forward and what they’re doing well.

Starting last month and finishing today in both our offices, we also allowed the staff to rate each person in a business ownership, leadership or management role in our organisation.

Terrifying? A little. Valuable? Absolutely.

Over the years, I’ve found the following things in doing these to be really important:

• Guarantee anonymity to the team participating – it’s the only way you get honest results. We have them compiled by one staff member and all put into an envelope and mixed up. Everyone marks in the same way, usually with the same pen.
• Properly explain how to fill the forms in. I even fell in a hole with this on the most recent round – need to remember this more carefully next time!
• Take it on the chin. Take the feedback you get as areas to improve upon and areas you’re doing well in. Not – well the staff clearly hate me!
• Assess multiple leaders – you’ll almost always find that one leader’s strength is another’s weaker point, meaning you have what you need in-house to improve.
• Reassess every six months, making sure your leaders focus on improving their scores each time.

Want a copy of the form we use in-house for our management 360 degree performance appraisals? View or download it on our Facebook page here.

Kirsty Dunphey is the youngest ever Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year, author of two books (her latest release is Retired at 27: If I Can do it Anyone Can) and a passionate entrepreneur who started her first business at age 15 and opened her own real estate agency at 21.

Now Kirsty does lots of fun things which you can read about here. Her favourite current projects are Elephant Property, a boutique property management agency, Baby Teresa, a baby clothing line that donates an outfit to a baby in need for each one they sell and ReallySold, which helps real estate agents stop writing boring, uninteresting ads.