A Study on Modern Methodologies in Performance Appraisals

In the modern competitive world, the greatest asset of any organization is its “Employees”. Employee is an individual who delivers his service to the workplace where he is being employed. Today, there is a new way for reaping the best of the organization through “Performance Appraisals”. “Evaluate what you want - because what gets measured gets produced” ~ James A. Belasco. Performance appraisal is a concept that started in the early 20th Century. It is the process of obtaining, analyzing and recording information about an employee to evaluate and improve their performance. Performance appraisal is evaluated in terms of Quality, quantity, time and cost and also analyses the value that the employee adds to the goals of the organization. “Encouraged people achieve the best; dominated people achieve second best; neglected people achieve the least.” Best HR Practices comprises one of the important element known as “Performance Appraisal” which is the most popular mantra for high organizational performance, which are believed to raise the morale and energy level of the employee. It becomes critical to every organization to improve the appraisal methods in order to increase the productivity. The present study focuses on modern methodologies of performance appraisal with special reference to the most recently introduced “720 Degree performance appraisal.” It sheds some light on how the modern methods of appraisal are different from that of the traditional methods. The study is based on the Secondary sources of information obtained from Journals and website articles, in order to analyse the modern methodologies of performance appraisal, to focus mainly on 360 degree and 720 degree performance appraisal, and to differentiate between the traditional and modern methods of performance appraisal