The scores given to a 360 Feedback questionnaire often have as much to do with the person providing feedback as the person receiving it. This may be due to personality, culture, their emotions on the day, or a combination of these factors. Fortunately, this doesn’t matter when you use the scores to prioritize areas that need improvement, and that's how our feedback reports are designed to be used. But it prevents a fair comparison.

Using scores for benchmarking ultimately leads to teams and individuals overanalyzing the scores. We want teams and individuals to focus on their top priorities and what they're going to do about it. This is far more important than arguing over why a particular area is 0.3 points below the industry norm!

Over time, employees will start to game the system. If the scores aren't great this year, then people will naturally start to try and give higher the scores next year. The result? Less useful feedback reports.

You should review and tweak the competencies assessed to match the values of your organization. These values do not necessarily match those of your competitors, and it's normal for values to evolve over time. You should be able to improve your feedback questionnaire to reflect this without being tied into an industry standard model.