Rating Game Multiple reviews give you a well-rounded picture of employee performance.

A decade ago, "multirater" performance feedback foremployees was a fad found in just a handful of businesses. Today,"it's used by over half the Fortune 500," says SusanGebelein, a senior vice president at Minneapolis-based PersonnelDecisions International, a creator of staff development tools. Thatmakes multirater feedback--where employees get formal insights ontheir performance from multiple sources such as peers, theirsubordinates and their boss--the hottest human resources trendaround. The question is, Why is it so rapidly replacing thetraditional boss-to-subordinate, one-way performance feedback modelthat has prevailed for generations?

Simple, says Mick Mount, chairman of the Department ofManagement and Organization at the University of Iowa in Iowa City:"We have come to recognize the boss does not know all theanswers. Certainly, the boss's perspective is valuable, but isit the only one? When we supplement it with the perspectives ofothers, we are much more likely to get a comprehensive picture of aperson's performance."

In the smallest businesses, boss-to-subordinate performancefeedback may be all that's needed to jump-start a worker'soutput. When there are only two to four employees, the boss mayhave ample insight into how an employee deals not only with him orher but also with co-workers.