Part 1 of 3
Principles of honest feedback
The Org360 feedback guide explains how to get honest feedback at work through 360 feedback, employee engagement surveys and client surveys. It's written for founders, CEOs and HR leads who want feedback people trust and they can act on.
In short
- Feedback at work breaks down for 2 reasons. There's too much of it, in long forms people don't have time for. And too many people can read it, so respondents stop being frank.
- Org360 surveys take under 10 minutes. The standard formats have 24 or 12 questions, because people give a survey about 10 minutes however long it is.
- In an Org360 360, the person receiving the feedback owns it. Whoever launches a 360 controls the report and decides who else sees it.
- Open-text answers are protected so nobody can tell who wrote what. Answers are shuffled, an AI summary can replace raw comments, and respondents can edit or withdraw answers until the survey closes.
- Org360 uses AI to combine scores and comments by topic and to suggest a development plan, with names removed first.
- Org360's survey questions are open source, built on published research and free for anyone to use.
What is honest feedback?
Org360 defines honest feedback as feedback given without self-censorship. In Org360's experience, people give honest feedback when 3 conditions are met:
- The survey is short enough to answer with care (article 1).
- The report goes only to the person who asked for it (article 2).
- Nobody can tell who wrote what (article 3).
Articles 4 and 5 explain the tools behind those conditions: how Org360 uses AI in its reports and where its survey questions come from.
The articles in part 1
- 1How long should a 360 or employee survey be?People give a survey about 10 minutes, so Org360 surveys have 24 or 12 questions and fit inside that time.
- 2Who should own 360 feedback?The person who launches a 360 controls the report. When only they can read it, colleagues can be frank.
- 3Is 360 feedback anonymous? How Org360 keeps open-text answers confidentialComments are where respondents are easiest to recognize, so Org360 shuffles them, can replace them with an AI summary, and lets people edit answers until the survey closes.
- 4How does Org360 use AI in feedback reports?The AI combines scores and comments by topic, flags outlier opinions and proposes a development plan.
- 5Why are Org360's surveys open source?The questions are free to use under a Creative Commons license, built on published research and improved by the people who use them.
Key terms in part 1
- Honest feedback: feedback given without self-censorship. In Org360's view, it needs a short survey, a report that goes only to the person who asked, and answers nobody can trace.
- 360-degree feedback: a survey in which a person gets confidential ratings and comments from the people they work with, such as peers, direct reports and their manager.
- The 10-minute budget: Org360's term for the roughly 10 minutes people give a survey, however many questions it has.
- eNPS (employee Net Promoter Score): a 0 to 10 "how likely are you to recommend" question that gives one headline number to track over time.
- Feedback ownership: the principle that whoever launches a 360 controls its report and decides who else sees it.
- Semi-public feedback: a 360 report that several people can read, such as HR, the department and the person's leader, which leads respondents to soften what they say.
See all definitions in the glossary and the research behind part 1.