Rethinking 360s to unlock value

In today’s performance-driven landscape, companies want tools that deliver measurable impact. Many overlook the transformative potential of 360-degree feedback — or fail to use it effectively – because the impact has been difficult to measure. 

Why 360s usually fall short 

360s offer rich insights, often revealing blind spots and developmental needs that managers may not recognise in themselves. However, conventional approaches tend to be: 

• Costly and centralised: 360s are often administered to everyone at once, creating feedback fatigue and missing the moment when feedback is most needed. 

• Too generic: One-size-fits-all questionnaires fail to reflect the nuances of different roles and levels. 

• Underutilised: Feedback is collected but not followed through with actionable development plans. 

To truly harness the power of 360s, organizations must rethink how and when they’re used.  

Rethinking the feedback experience 

One common barrier is the tendency for people to ‘be nice’ — especially when reviewing their boss. This politeness can dilute the value of feedback. The solution? Change the way questions are asked.  any-3’s approach ensures relevance and encourages honest, constructive input. This provides a truer picture, providing evidence to build effective development plans, identify under-performers and also future stars. 

Introducing ‘TIF’: Timely Improvement Feedback 

any-3 goes beyond traditional 360s with its ‘TIF’ model — Timely Improvement Feedback. This dynamic process ensures feedback isn’t just received, but acted upon: 

1. Feedback can be triggered at key points throughout the year — such as after a major project. This flexibility spreads the workload, boosts take-up and delivers better value. A single investment enables multiple surveys, making it more cost-effective than traditional one-off reviews. 

2. any-3 has further enhanced the 360 process by introducing questions tailored to different management levels and functions, ensuring relevance and precision.  

3. Traditional scales of how well people are performing can be replaced by action-orientated scales. This refined response scale helps uncover not just what an employee does well, but: 

• What they should do more of 

• What they should do less of, or differently 

Crucially we separately uncover which items are most important for the employee to work on. The subsequent results help produce improvement plans that identify the top three priorities for an individual.  

Strategic impact across the business 

The outcome is that managers can identify what is important for their role and are clear as to the action they need to take. For OD teams the prioritisation of activities by reviewers reveals globally what are the critical aspects for each role and level in the organisation, enabling relevant development efforts across the business.  

Embedded improvement planning turns the feedback into actions which the manager will take (therefore delivering the benefit). Additionally, timely improvement feedback is used to check that the manager is actioning their plan correctly and gathering further guidance during implementation to maximise beneficial change. 

Partnering with any-3 

any-3's approach is to work with you collaboratively, creating the questions and delivering an easy-to-use self-service facility which is cost-effective and delivers improvement. 

This approach transforms 360s from an expensive tick-box exercise into a powerful tool for growth, clarity, and strategic talent development. Let’s talk about how we can help your business unlock the full value of 360-degree feedback.