Rate your boss!

Jul 12 2004 by Brian Amble Print This Article

What a fabulous idea.

ImproveNow.com is an online service that anonymously lets employees carry out a performance review of their boss.

If you're the CAPTAIN, you may want to find out -- and FAST -- what your CREW really thinks about your ship with this classic, proven attitude survey! Find out what's working, what isn't. Clear the decks for action and begin improving fast. If you're a CREW member and you and others would like to let Capt. Bligh know what you think, here's your chance to do it anonymously.

An assessment can be either employee- or management-initiated and both protect the anonymity of participants. The initiator can then invite up to 50 colleagues to carry out the same assessment and ImproveNow will then automatically email the boss with the results, providing a letter grade in all the major leadership areas, as well as an overall grade as a boss. The people who assessed the boss are NOT privy to the results the boss sees.

ImproveNow say that the service based on three simple notions:

  1. Employees often feel they are not heard by their supervisors and managers. They feel they are not openly and honestly communicated with. Often they live in fear that their managers will find ways to retaliate and make their work life even more miserable if they speak up. An anonymous "bottom-up" survey can create an opening for communication that might otherwise not occur.

  2. The world is well- if not over-populated with bad bosses, and too little is being done about it by top management (who are frequently poor managers and communicators themselves). Giving bosses the opportunity to respond to the concerns of employees who report to them is giving them the opportunity for success and satisfaction in their jobs and careers. Giving bosses this opportunity, can, in fact, create the conditions for improving worker job satisfaction, morale and retention. AND business performance!

  3. If bosses hear from, perhaps, a vocal minority, they may find a reason to survey the entire worker population to find out how valid and widespread the concerns raised really are and, then, initiate a "top-down", organization-wide "Improve Your Boss" or "Improve Your Company" assessment.

The final step is, of course, to report the results, unvarnished, to staff. Acknowledge both the good and the not-so-good results. Where appropriate, either state a management position clearly and/or promise actions to solve the problem.

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