Which method of appraisal is most suited for appraising the following categories of employees?

a) IT professionals b) Telesales c) HR professionals d) R & D scientist Give justifications for choosing any particular method.

DEFINITION
Performance appraisal is the process of obtaining, analyzing and recording information about the relative worth of an employee. The focus of the performance appraisal is measuring and improving the actual performance of the employee and also the future potential of the employee. Its aim is to measure what an employee does.

OBJECTIVES OF PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL:

To review the performance of the employees over a given period of time. To judge the gap between the actual and the desired performance. To help the management in exercising organizational control. Helps to strengthen the relationship and communication between superior subordinates and management employees. To diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of the individuals so as to identify the training and development needs of the future. To provide feedback to the employees regarding their past performance. Provide information to assist in the other personal decisions in the organization. Provide clarity of the expectations and responsibilities of the functions to be performed by the employees.

To judge the effectiveness of the other human resource functions of the organization such as recruitment, selection, training and development. To reduce the grievances of the employees.

METHODS

IT PROFESSIONALS
360 degree feedback is the best method for the IT professionals.

360 degree is also known as'multi-rater feedback', is the most comprehensive appraisal where the feedback about the employees performance comes from all the sources that come in contact with the employee on his job. 360 degree appraisal has four integral components 1. Self appraisal 2. Superiors appraisal 3. Subordinates appraisal 4. Peer appraisal. Self appraisal gives a chance to the employee to look at his/her strengths and weaknesses, his achievements, and judge his own performance. Superiors appraisal forms the traditional part of the 360 degree performance appraisal where the employees responsibilities and actual performance is rated by the superior. Subordinates appraisal gives a chance to judge the employee on the parameters like communication and motivating abilities, superiors ability to delegate the work, leadership qualities etc. Also known as internal customers, the correct feedback given by peers can help to find employees abilities to work in a team, co-operation and sensitivity towards others. This technique is being effectively used across the globe for performance appraisals. Some of the organizations following it are Wipro, Infosys etc.

TELESALES
The method that can be chosen for telesales is Behavioral Checklist. A behavioral checklist is a rating form containing statements describing both effective and ineffective job behaviors. These behaviors relate to a number of behavioral dimensions determined to be relevant to the job.

Items from a behavioral checklist for a telesales 1. Calls on customers immediately after hearing of any complaints 2. Discusses complaints with customer 3. Gathers facts relevant to customers' complaints 4. Transmits information about complaints back to customers and resolves problems to their satisfaction 5. Plans each day's activities ahead of time 6. Lays out broad sales plans for one month ahead 7. Gathers sales information from customers, other salesmen, trade journals, and other relevant sources Behavioral checklists are well suited to employee development because they focus on behaviors and results, and use absolute rather comparative standards. An advantage of behavioral checklists is that evaluators are asked to describe rather than evaluate a subordinate's behavior. For this reason, behavioral checklists may meet with less evaluator resistance than some other methods. An obvious disadvantage of behavioral checklists is that much time and money must be invested to construct the instrument.

HR PROFESSIONAL
The role of the HR professional in performance appraisal would largely depend on the type of performance management system and the culture of the organization. Assessment centre refers to a method to objectively observe and assess the people in action by experts or HR professionals with the help of various assessment tools and instruments. Assessment centers simulate the employees on the job environment and facilitate the assessment of their on the job performance.

An assessment centre for Performance appraisal of an employee typically includes:

Social/Informal Events An assessment centre has a group of participants and also a few assessors which gives a chance to the employees to socialize with a variety of people and also to share information and know more about the organization.

Information Sessions information sessions are also a part of the assessment centers. They provide information to the employees about the organization, their roles and responsibilities, the activities and the procedures etc.

Assignments- assignments in assessment centers include various tests and exercises which are specially designed to assess the competencies and the potential of the employees. These include various interviews, psychometric tests, management games etc. all these assignments are focused at the target job.

The following are the common features of all assessment centers:

All the activities are carried out to fill the targeted job. The final results is based on the pass/fail criteria Each session lasts from 1 to 5 days.
The results are based on the assessment of the assessors with less

emphasis oneself-assessment
Immediate review or feedback is not provided to the employees.

R&D SCIENTIST
The method is used for R & D Scientist is Management By Objectives (MBO) .It can be defined as a process whereby the employees and the superiors come together to identify common goals, the employees set their goals to be achieved, the standards to be taken as the criteria for

measurement of their performance and contribution and deciding the course of action to be followed. The essence of MBO is participative goal setting, choosing course of actions and decision making. An important part of the MBO is the measurement and the comparison of the employees actual performance with the standards set. Ideally, when employees themselves have been involved with the goal setting and the choosing the course of action to be followed by them, they are more likely to fulfill their responsibilities.

THE MBO PROCESS

The principle behind Management by Objectives (MBO) is to create empowered employees who have clarity of the roles and responsibilities expected from them, understand their objectives to be achieved and thus help in the achievement of organizational as well as personal goals.