Back to Archive
    Article2012

    Best Practice Institute Introduces New Social Network that Promises ‘Future of 360′

    By Bpi

    Share

    '''

    The Future of 360-Degree Feedback and Social Learning

    Best Practice Institute has introduced Skillrater.com, an online social network designed to modernize performance feedback. This platform allows members to easily request work performance ratings from managers, peers, and direct reports across a global workforce. The goal is to make the 360-degree assessment process more open, transparent, and driven by an employee's desire to improve.

    According to a study of over 1,700 CEOs, business leaders are increasingly focused on creating more open and transparent work environments. Skillrater aligns with this shift by empowering employees to take ownership of their feedback process. Instead of a top-down mandate from HR, employees proactively request feedback, fostering a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.

    How Skillrater Modernizes Employee Feedback

    Skillrater improves upon the traditional 360-degree feedback process by making it more contextual and immediate. Instead of hiding feedback, the platform facilitates direct conversations about performance, allowing for immediate correction and guidance from bosses, peers, and even customers. This process is supported by threaded discussions where individuals can seek deeper advice from coaches or team members.

    Key innovations include:

    • On-Demand Requests: Individuals can request a rating at any time and control who sees the results.
    • Contextual Feedback: Feedback is tied to a specific project or activity, answering the questions, "How did I do, and how can I do better?"
    • Immediate, Online Access: Ratings are delivered instantly online in an easy-to-digest format, eliminating long delays.
    • Positive Framing: The tool is designed to seek positive feedback, which encourages more honest and constructive responses.

    Over time, this process reveals measurable changes in behavior and highlights patterns for improvement on individual, team, and organizational levels.

    Applications for Talent and Leadership Development

    For corporate users, Skillrater provides a powerful solution for talent management and leadership development, especially within globally dispersed workforces.

    Developing Leaders in Dispersed Teams

    The platform's integrated social network allows employees to move from quantitative ratings to qualitative discussions, which is where true transformation occurs. This creates a dispersed learning environment that cultivates ongoing development and action learning without the need for constant in-person meetings. VPs of leadership development can establish action learning groups, track progress on goals, and measure the ROI of their programs.

    Data-Driven Talent Management

    Senior executives can use Skillrater to track job performance, skill sets, and development across the entire organization. When a specific skill is needed for a project, a manager can search for employees with that skill and review fresh, detailed feedback from recent work. This provides rich, valuable data that puts talent management at executives' fingertips.

    Benefits for Individuals and Corporations

    For Individual Users: Individuals can join for free to map their own development. Requesting ratings is an effective way to confirm project satisfaction and demonstrate a commitment to high performance. A strong, public Skillrater profile can also attract the attention of employers and recruiters looking for talent with proven skills.

    For Corporate Users: Companies can purchase an enterprise membership to enroll thousands of users. This provides an unparalleled tool for customizing competencies, tracking performance data, and connecting the right employees with the right tasks.

    How It Works

    1. Create a Profile: A user creates a profile or imports one from LinkedIn.
    2. Request a Rating: The member specifies the task and skills for which they want feedback.
    3. Invite Raters: The request is sent to other Skillrater members or to external raters via email.
    4. Receive Feedback: The user is notified when feedback is received and can view it in a graphical "spider chart" format that compares ratings to their self-assessment.
    5. Discuss and Improve: Users can then engage in threaded discussions to gain further clarification and coaching. '''
    Share this articleLinkedInXFacebookRedditWhatsAppEmail

    Best Practice Institute

    Best Practice Institute is the research organization behind Most Loved Workplace® certification, the SPARK Model, the Love of Workplace Index™ (LOWI™), and The Workplace Report.

    The Workplace Report

    The Workplace Report is BPI's original workplace culture research and editorial briefing series for CEOs, CHROs, people leaders, talent leaders, and employer-brand teams. It turns BPI's 25 years of research, Most Loved Workplace® certification data, SPARK findings, and current workforce signals into practical analysis leaders can use.

    The report format includes executive summaries, research-backed articles, company examples, methodology notes, and practical implications for retention, hiring, culture, leadership, and employee experience. New research and analysis is published on an ongoing editorial cadence at /workplace-report.