Firm Wide 360 Degree Performance Evaluation Process at Morgan Stanley

THE FIRM WIDE 360 PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONPROCESS AT MORGAN STANLEY

Process

• All of the professional employees identified those people within the firm with whom they regularly interacted.
• Evaluation Request Form (ERF) is the list of above identified prospective evaluators and is reviewed by the evaluatee’s manager or supervisor.
• ERF was then submitted to the Office of Development.
• Processing of evaluation forms into a Year-End Data Packet for each evaluatee.
• Each professional also completed their own self-evaluation.

Disadvantages

• It took a great deal of time and effort to write clear and consistent summaries.
• Numerical ratings were used as if they were somehow ‘real’ and precise.
• Summary number was a crutch that allowed people to discount the qualitative information contained in the open ended summaries.
• Existence of rampant ‘grade inflation’ with numeric scores and written comments.
• Questioned the importance of commerciality, leadership and management.
•  The biggest challenged included how to weigh the criteria and the input from different evaluators.
• The evaluatee never saw the actual comments made by those who had completed evaluation forms.
• A complete disconnect between a person’s self -perception and that of the colleagues, superiors, and subordinates.

Advantages

• System advantages those who may not be good at promoting themselves.
• Transparency in terms of seeing through those who are ‘too good’ at self – promotion.
• Inclusion of numeric sales and an overall summary rating for the intention of facilitating comparisons across individuals.
• Helps to make better decisions.
• Perceived as helpful in conducting performance appraisals because the manager was able to draw on detailed and specific information from a broad cross-section of employee.
• Evaluators were free to express themselves.
• Rigorous performance criteria as one progressed the organizational hierarchy.