How often should 360-degree feedback be administered?

Because today’s web-enabled systems make it easy and economical to collect and report structured feedback and make it available to all employees as often as they need it. However, most of the benefit of 360 would be missed if 360 were limited to only one administration. It’s not the kind of thing about which managers should say, "We did it, we got what we could out of it, so let’s move on."

To be sure, the first administration provides a wealth of revelations about strengths and new areas for improvement—typically more than a person can address in one cycle of development. The feedback is believable, since it comes from many sources; and the narrative comments are often perceived as the most valuable input, since they are more descriptive than numbers can be. Ideally, feedback recipients will focus on one or two high-priority areas for improvement. If their development plans are realistic, and if they implement them, major gains in personal performance can be achieved.

People need time to experiment with new patterns and learn from successes and frustrations. The ideal period between assessments is between nine months and a year. It's enough time to make changes and create new perceptions; yet, it's not so distant in the future that the hard work of behavioral change can be deferred.
The knowledge that a follow-up repeat assessment will be conducted can increase a person's motivation to undertake the difficult challenge of changing ingrained patterns. The people who want to change will welcome a repeat assessment. They’d like to transform weak areas into strengths, and they realize a follow-up assessment will document their progress.