How 360 degree appraisal method is benefited to employees and the company.

In management we talk about a concept called 9 M's- that, Man, Money, Material, Machines Methods, Market, Minutes, Motivation and Measurement. Every company in the world are using above-mentioned resources to achieve their goals and objectives. Out of all these resources, Human /Man resources are playing a key role each and every company. Without Human resource, no company can survive and achieve their goals and objectives. 

Human Resources can be simply defined as managing the human resources of the company to achieve goals and objectives.

Human resource management (HRM)is the strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization's most valued assets the people working there who individually and collectively contribute to the objectives of the business. (Armstrong, 2006)

Beer et al (1984) defined HRM as involving all those management decision and actions that affect the nature of the relationship between the organization and the employee.

HRM is a distinctive approach to employment management which seek to achieve competitive advantage through the strategic deployment of the highly committed and capable workforce, using an array of cultural structural and personnel techniques (storey, 1995).

Under the HRM  we can identify key HR function like recruitment, selection, hiring, induction, performance appraisal, manpower planning, employee movement, welfare administration, disciplinary administration etc. Every company success depends on the quality of the workforce and we have to take so many actions to retained and develop the workforce in the company. Out of all those HR functions, performance appraisal is one of most impotent function that will help to maintain a quality workforce.

Performance Management and performance appraisal

Performance management is a strategic and integrated approach to delivering sustained success to the organization by improving the performance of the people who work in them and by developing the capabilities of teams and individual contributors.(Armstrong and Baron ,1998)

According to the Vijay and Jaya Chitra (2000)mentioned performance management is building performance appraisal by adding the related communication and action on the progress achieved against determined goals.

Performance management can be instinct as an ongoing process of improving the individual, team and organizational performance (Bussim,2012). Performance appraisal is one of the parts of PMS it helps to measure individuals' performance in an organized manner.

According to the Vijay and jayathithra (2000) mentioned performance appraisal as the process of evaluating determined goals.

Performance appraisal methods

Basically, performance appraisal methods can be divided into two parts:

1. Traditional Methods of performance appraisal: This is the older methods of performance appraisal used by the companies  two to three decades ago .traditional PA system can be summarized as follows;

• Ranking methods: Base of traits of the particular employees raking he or she best to worst.
• Graphics rating scale: A scale that consists with a number of traits and range of performance.
• Critical incident: Keeping a record of employees work-related behaviour and take this consideration at the annual performance appraisal.
• Narrative essays: Evaluator    write about employees strength, weaknesses and suggestion

      2.Modern methods of performance appraisal: This has developed taking consideration of the shortcoming of the traditional methods. There are several modern PA methods like;

• Management by objective: Setting challenging and achievable objective promote motivation and empowerment of employees.
•  Assessment centre: This method consists of group discussion, exercises and interviewing of the relevant employees.
• 360 Performance Appraisal: evaluate employees by considering internal sources and external sources. 
• 720 Performance appraisal: After the 360 appraisal boss is sit down with the employees again on a second time give him to feedback and explain how to achieve a given target. 

360-degree appraisal method

This method is one of the modern performance appraisal method used by companies to evaluate their employees. Normally its called multi-rater feedback or multi-source assessment. Considering with the other appraisal method 360 getting feedback from employees, subordinates, peers and supervisors as well as self-evaluation. Not only that  360 get feedback from external parties such as suppliers. Nowadays this methods has developed up to 720-degree level.

In traditional and earlier methods of the PA system feedback from the employees totally depend on the evaluator /boss. this system was full of bias, but 360  feedback system was free of bias that's why it was popular all over the world.

According to Waldman and Atwater (1998), the process in which subordinates, peers, bosses or customer provide anonymous feedback to the recipient has grown during the past decade.360 feedback system processes employees can get confidential feedback from his or her subordinates and other people around them.from this feedback employee will be able to identify their weaknesses and set self-development goals that will help for his career enhancement and personal development. 

Pros of 360   

• Performance improvement: since feedback comes from various different sources like subordinates, peers and customers that will help to identify employees weaknesses and take necessary action to overcome weaknesses.
• Increase consistency in the performance: employees always think how others think about them then it will help to perform consistency.
• Help to maintain good relationship with all the people around them: as we know 360 getting information from all the sources that will help to make good relationship with others.
• Help to achieve company goals and objectives: First employees try to achieve their department goal and that will ultimately help to achieve company goals.
• Decision making: we can take almost correct decision because information are gathering from various internal and external sources.
• Enhance of the employee morale and self-confident.
• Help to enhance good customer relationship.
• HR decision making is easier 
• Accurate and more reliable and free of bias   

Cons of 360 

• Take more time for the process and it will cause excessive cost.
• If the feedback is not good moral and self-esteem of the employees will be damaged
•  Using the same parameters for all the employees.
• Sometimes feedback might not be accurate.
• More focus on the weakness of the employees.
• some situation it may create a negative culture within the company.

This is not a best appraisal method but comparing with traditional appraisal methods we can rely on 360-degree feedback.  comparing with disadvantages it has more advantages to employees as well as the company.

References

  1.Available at http://www.academia.edu.[Accessed: 30 November,2018].
  2.Available at    http://www.sumhr.com[Accessed: 30 November,2018]