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Did you ever rely on Google Forms feedback for performing a 360-degree review? Perhaps you thought this was the easiest way—all you had to do was create a questionnaire and let people fill it out. Plus, it’s free, so it seemed like a win-win situation.
Unfortunately, things got a bit complicated. A lot of people didn’t respond, so you had to send multiple reminders. Perhaps you inserted the same question twice, which ruined your statistics?
Overall, Google forms may not be the best solution for 360 degree review. Businesses that start using Effy will discover these pretty soon. Keeping that in mind, let's explore the key drawbacks of Google Forms feedback in 360-review and suggest how the services offered by Effy can serve as a remedy.
What are Google Forms, and why do companies use them
In a nutshell, a member of the Google Suite family, Google Forms is a simple survey tool. It has been a front-runner in the performance review market since 2007. With this tool in your arsenal, you can simply insert your performance review questions, create forms, gather feedback, and get a standard output regarding employee performance evaluation.
Google Forms work via Google Drive and include different elements. For instance, you can add a feedback survey Google Form, edit questions, add answer feedback, choose between theme options and share links.
In short, users appeal to Google Forms reviews when conducting opinion surveys, quizzes, customer feedback forms and event registrations.
However, while the tool can create online forms and requests, it gets tricky with more complex inquiries, such as 360-degree performance reviews.
360-degree feedback in a nutshell
In short, 360-degree feedback is a method for reviewing an employee's performance from multiple perspectives. A good 360-degree feedback example includes feedback from managers, supervisors, several peers and, in most cases, self-assessments.
Businesses use 360-degree reviews as an alternative to traditional employee performance reviews. This helps paint a more objective image of a person's performance and understand a worker's core strengths and weaknesses.
Since 360-degree involves an omnichannel approach, Google Forms feedback needs help to capture the review's complex nature.
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Five main drawbacks of Google Forms feedback in a 360-degree review
Even though Google Forms feedback is free and simple to use, it serves as something other than a panacea. Let's explore the platform's five specific drawbacks when handling Google Forms 360 review template to prove that.
- Time wasted and a higher chance of error
When conducting a 360 version of Google Forms, you must gather feedback on each employee from multiple sources. It means you’ll need to create a separate Google Form feedback for every reviewee. Over time, the number of such forms will pile up quickly.
In addition, after completing the review, you'll have results in separate files, which need to be put together into a single folder or a Google Sheet. Doing all these actions requires a lot of time, increasing the risk of an error.
- The issue with repetitive question
Working with Google Forms 360 review template means you should prepare a self-assessment questionnaire and solicit feedback from managers, supervisors, and employees. In other words - you need a distinct query for every source.
For example, a self-assessment statement may sound: 'I don't always listen attentively or ensure I grasp everything my colleagues are saying correctly.'
Managers, supervisors, and colleagues, on the other hand, might reply: 'Doesn't always listen attentively and grasp others appropriately.'
Using different versions of the same questions will complicate things. When preparing a 360-degree performance review, you need to compare all the questions and make sure there are no mistakes. This makes the report more laborious and time-consuming.
- Complicated report preparation process
Preparing reports is the most painful part of the 360-feedback review process. First, you need to compile all the responses into a single file such as Google Sheets. Second, you need to prepare dashboards and charts showing the key insights. Third, you need to send all of that to a reviewee and their manager/supervisor.
With Google Forms feedback, you will repeat the process above multiple times for each employee under review. Moreover, the report preparation might also include compiling analytics for the entire company or C-Level management. Overall, using feedback survey Google Forms for report preparation means doing a great deal of work.
- Managerial burnout and declining response rate
Let's put ourselves in a manager's shoes. They need to offer feedback and assess employees, sometimes dozens of them. In the context of Google Forms feedback, a reviewer must search for all the links referencing each form. It is safe to say that handling the process takes a toll on the person doing the job.
As a result, a reviewer will spend a lot of time managing all the links. In addition, it leads to a response rate decline. Finally, handling the process above requires an additional degree of control, as well as multiple reminders. Getting this right is vital for developing a performance improvement plan later.
- Challenges with a review history
Finally, when putting all the puzzle pieces together, you get an increasingly complex and repetitive process with Google Form feedback. In addition, after handling each individual review and presenting different questions, you need to do one last thing - save the review history.
Now it becomes tricky. In general, if a company conducts more than 100 performance reviews annually, the business needs to have a dedicated manager who will take care of the process. This means one more person on the payroll.
How Effy deals with 360-degree feedback?
Effy allows you to create surveys, get instant feedback, and automate the review process, which saves much time compared to Google Forms feedback. The platform helps handle customer feedback, create customer feedback surveys in a few clicks, and aids in assessing employee performance. How does Effy achieve that?
- The tool includes a library of templates. You can manage and customize it, as well as add different questions, and adjust various settings like multiple self-review features and score evaluation.
- You'll have a clear picture of the entire process when running a performance report. It entails seeing who offered feedback and who abstained.
- All the participants will see a complete list of forms that need to be filled out. They will also receive notifications and reminders via email, Slack, or Microsoft Teams.
- After all the forms are filled out, the platform will automatically generate insight and analytics with multiple points of comparison.
To outline, as a performance review software, Effy allows users to save time and do a 360-degree feedback review as easily as ever. All these lead to more accurate personnel evaluation and more effective people strategy development.
What else does Effy have you will never get with Google Forms 360 review template?
At this point, we know that using Google Form feedback presents major challenges. In addition, we've seen how Effy manages to make the review process seamless and simple. Yet, you get some additional benefits with this performance review software that Google Forms cannot offer.
- All the review-related data is stored in one place. It means Effy's users can access a needed review and manage user access at a moment's notice.
- Effy grants a full degree of automation with peer identification, form sending and participants' reminding.
- Effy comes with a review calendar showing when every participant needs to undergo a review process.
- Users get performance improvement plan templates within the same system, which is extremely convenient.
- Effy allows conducting one-on-ones and recording results to understand employee strengths.
All these aspects make the platform much more appealing than Google Forms feedback. Keep in mind that while you don't pay money to use Google Forms, there is nothing that comes for free
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