Cautions About Use Of Individuals’ Data

These sub-reports should be generated and used with caution. They identify the mean results for all individual Subjects, averaging all the ratings each received.

Their use may compromise trust in the Project, depending on how you have positioned the confidentiality of the 360-degree feedback process for Subjects.

For the protection of Subjects' privacy, you can choose whether they will be listed in the Report by name, or by their Subject Access Code (SAC) only. (See the Report Design tab.) In the latter case, individual identities are not readily available by those with no need-to-know.

This information should be interpreted with a great deal of caution. In fact, there may be legal implications if it is used to support termination and/or discipline actions.

Apart from legal questions, this information, like all the information in the Group Report, has the following limitations:

• It is based on a questionnaire which covers only a limited range of topics.
• The 360-degree feedback project was designed to provide guidance to Subjects, not to an entire organization.
• The responses represent the perceptions of a limited number of more-or-less well-selected Responders.
• Each Subject has a different panel of Responders, with unique expectations, standards, and prejudices, as opposed to a situation where all Subjects are evaluated by the same people from the same perspective.
• All summaries are based on Responders' perceptions, not on measurable facts.

So investigate further anytime you see low ratings which might lead you to take action. And be sure you investigate in a way which does not signal to others that a certain Subject may be a "problem". That sort of identification, once established, is hard to shake.