A well-written and well documented performance appraisal is of great importance in all organizations, no matter what type of business it is in. Employee appraisal can serve as a platform for employees to bring forth questions and concerns. This can help increase employee perseverance, creativity, and job satisfaction. Reviews allow the organizations to evaluate employees for increased responsibilities and future promotions. The PA acts as a road map for both organization and its employees.

PAs help organizations with useful information such as employee’s skill, knowledge, capability their knowledge up gradation, attitude, aptitude, health changes if any etc. In fact PA helps to improve the communication system of the organization and to review the potentiality of employees so that their future capability is anticipated. It helps in setting marketing and sales goals, operational goals, outsourcing function, infrastructural capability, R&D etc.

Rank and Yank is a term used to describe a process by which a company ranks its employees against each other, and terminates the employment of the people at the lowest end of the ranking (that’s the yank). The term probably came into being to describe the process used at General Electric (GE), and is associated with former CEO Jack Welch. In his view, the real term was “differentiation.” He looked at appraisals for building great thorough consistency, transparency and openness. Welch has written that “It’s about aligning performance with the organization’s mission and values. It’s about making sure that all employees know where they stand.” What happens to the yanks? According to Welch, the employees at bottom line 10% employees (the poor performers) will never feel let down, when PAs are done on regular intervals and are transparent.

A transparent, ethical PA system is never demoralizing or inhuman. What’s inhumane is failing to make the organization’s standards and values clear and transparent and letting people know where they stand. According to Welch, managers owe frankness and sincerity to their subordinates; they must never create environment in which the subordinates keep guessing about what the organization thinks of them. Employees must know exactly what organization feels about them.

During the hiring process, recruiters and hiring managers must tell employees when and how they will receive performance appraisals. Employees trust employers to follow throughout all promises; from paying employees on time, to giving employees holidays, enhancing career, and timely evaluation of their performance. Therefore, conducting systematic and timely performance appraisals is an important consideration when it comes to placing value on the company’s human capital.

Following are some specific tips for drafting better performance evaluations:

• Be specific and avoid generalization: Phrases such as ‘maintain time limit’, ‘work harder,’ ‘increase production’ are not specific. They create ambiguity in minds of employees. Be specific by mentioning exactness. Such as ‘increase sales by 20% in the next three months,’ ‘you need to work from 9am to 5 pm,’ these are measurable objectives, and assist both the employee and employer.
• Focus on what you want the employee to do, not what you want him/her to be: A performance evaluation is not about finding flaws in an employee’s personality or discussing only weaknesses. You cannot change the employee’s basic personality traits in a performance evaluation. Managers must objectively state exactly what is expected out of the employee.
• Use real details: Use the correct and full name of the employee, his joining date, cadre, salary, exact designation, detailed duties, family background etc. Be specific.  Be clear about his Key Result Areas (KRA) what is expected from the employee and the date it is expected. For documenting performance issues, get as detailed as possible instead of merely using phrases such as ‘is a trouble maker’ instead, document incidents where the employee’s attitude was inappropriate, stating the date, place, incident, witnesses, behavior(s), and the unfavorable effect of the employee’s conduct on those around him, as well as the specific organizational policies and procedures to be used when employee’s behavior is violated.
• Set only a limited number of objectives: The employee needs to be able to do the work; people can’t achieve an objective that is not within their scope of influence or current capability. The employee must have the tools, resources, and access required to get the work done. Expectations must be well defined, and the employee must have sufficient time and assistance to meet milestones. Remember, more than seven objectives are excessive.
• Appraisal biases: should be avoided as far as possible. In performance appraisal halo bias is termed as Matthew Effect. It is said to occur where employees tend to keep receiving the same appraisal results, year in and year out judged or based on an early performance evaluation. If an employee did well on the early evaluation, he will be more trusted than other employees and all of his work will be seen in a favorable light. If he did poorly, he will have a very hard time earning trust or a positive evaluation from his boss. Their appraisal results tend to become self-fulfilling: if they have done well, they will continue to do well; if they have done poorly, they will continue to do poorly. The Matthew Effect suggests that no matter how hard an employee strives, their past appraisal records will prejudice their future attempts to improve.

Often organizations overlook importance of timely performance appraisal, though it is  powerful for enhancing employee satisfaction and retention. The timely and accurate performance reviews are a key factor in retaining a satisfied and productive workforce. Feedback, whether positive or negative, can help employees understand the company’s expectations and perceptions and provides a pathway to improvement. Providing timely feedback lets good employees know you appreciate their accomplishments. While identifying what an employee can or needs to do better is a critical function of performance reviews, other equally critical yet often overlooked functions include showing the company’s appreciation for employees who are successful, showing passion and accountability for their work, and letting them know they are important to the success of the company.

Training and development is another area which can be used with help of PA. Training and development are used together to bring about the overall familiarization, improvement, and education of an organization’s employees.  In general, training programs have very specific and quantifiable goals, such as operating a particular piece of machinery, understanding a specific process, or performing certain procedures with great precision. On the other hand, developmental programs concentrate on broader skills that are applicable to a wider variety of situations, such as decision making, leadership skills, and goal setting.
Google schedules their performance reviews twice a year; major one at the end of the year and a smaller one mid-year. Each review consists of a self-assessment, a set of peer reviews, and if an employee is applying for a promotion, reasons for why he should be promoted to the next level.  Each review component is submitted via an online tool.  Around performance review time, it’s not exceptional to see many engineers taking a day or more just to write the reviews through the tool. In the self-assessment, the employee summarizes his major accomplishments and contributions since the last review. He is asked to describe his strengths and areas for improvement; the employee is expected to frame them with respect to the job expectations described in his career ladder.  For peer reviews, employees are expected to choose around 3-8 peers (fellow engineers, product managers, or others that can comment on their work) to write their peer reviews.  Often, managers assign additional individuals to write peer reviews for one of their reports, particularly newer or younger employees who may be less familiar with the process are chosen. Peers comment on an employee’s contribution in a project, on his strengths, and on areas for improvement.  If an employee applies for a promotion, the peer reviews become more relevant for considering his promotion.

An accurate performance reviews is critical because it helps exceptional employees being  rewarded with exceptional performance ratings and the benefits that go along with those ratings, while poor performers should be rated and rewarded accordingly. Employees talk among themselves and share information. It can be extremely demoralizing for a high-performing employee to learn that marginal or poor performers have received the same rating, pay raise, and other benefits.

Finally, change is constant in business; the PA system should also change accordingly.

The Literature review is a vital part of the research process.  You will gain important insights by reviewing assortment of literature available on your topic of research. By reviewing literature you will gain an approach, knowledge, and more awareness on your chosen topic for research. An in-depth literature evaluation will help you in setting the stage for a better-designed study and will help improve your chances in obtaining significant results.  Therefore, it is worth the time and effort to analyze it in right fashion.

Reviewing the literature involves finding the sources, analyzing, amalgamating, and interpreting. You might find incompatible and contrasting views expressed by different authors on your topic. These conflicting points of view might be the indicators of swerving theories within the same topic. To shape up a genuine research, you need to be aware of these conflicting theories as well. Remember, verity of arguments and your views add flavor to your thesis. Being aware of those theories will help you later in your life; you will be able to talk and apply your knowledge in your work from different perspectives.

The literature review is science as well as art. You can have it as chapter at the beginning of your thesis or it can even be involved as veiled literature review throughout the thesis. The literature review should be balanced with your thought process on the topic, your ideas are most important. Some researchers stuff half of their thesis with literature review. Keep in mind that the literature (secondary data) is somebody else’s idea and not yours. It is not new information either. Therefore, try to give something new by taking support of existing literature.

One common way to approach literature review is to start out broad and then become more specific by narrowing down the focus. This style of writing is called ‘An Inverted Triangle’. Usually, when researchers get a hang of their topic, they recognize that the readers/referees will skim the thesis to find points of relevance. The inverted pyramid style of writing presents the essential facts in the first paragraph, with a hope of drawing the reader into the narrative. This style is used in the majority of thesis/research papers.

This type of writing fashion enhances your writing: all the facts are presented in order of importance, with the most important information leading the narrative. This style of writing is quite creative and functional. The first paragraph usually answers who, what, when, where and why. The rest of the narration provides detailed descriptions, quotations from witnesses or experts, and background information that relates to the opening paragraph.

You will find literature from variety of sources such as previous research thesis, newspapers, periodicals, books, journals, abstracts, Internet, Wikipedia, news bulletins, television, radio etc.

A careful and exhaustive review of the literature helps you in following manner:

• Enables you to focus on the purpose of your study more precisely.
• It develops a conceptual or theoretical framework that might be useful to touch upon your research objectives.
• It also helps to identify key variables for easing your methodology.
• You can find inter relationships among the chosen variables to quantify the study.
• If you find a previous research on similar topic of yours, you can meaningfully extend it.
• A literature review helps you conclude relationship on current and past scenario.
• And, most importantly it helps you prepare validated questionnaires for collecting primary data.

Four of the most common formats of literature review are:

Historical Format: Here the review is organized chronologically.  This is preferred when focus is on the progression of research methods or theories, or a change in practice over time.

Conceptual Format: Review is organized according to relevant concepts and theories.

Methodological Format:  Where literature review organizes and shapes the format that of an empirical paper. This is used most often used in meta-analytic reports.

Hypothetical Format: The role of this form is to examine the quantity of theory that has accumulated in regard to an issue. The hypothetical literature review helps to establish rationale based upon what theories already exist, the relationships between them, to what extent the existing theories have been examined, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested.

Lastly, this might sound a bit obscure but you will find that by reviewing other’s thesis, you will learn about the ways other people have constructed their own research work. Seeing what others have done, type of approach adopted by them, logic in organizing chapters might help you understand your own assignment. You might be able to see the methods that other, more experienced researchers have used and it might give you a fair idea to follow your own research methodology. As a researcher, you are required to write the literature review to summarize and discuss the major documents published in that topic in the past and present. The narration will take into account the methods and the results or findings of the most relevant tips. Your referees will assess whether the methodology is appropriate and whether the results seem valid. Don’t merely list books, documents, periodical, journals, and websites do read relevant points and discuss them. If your merely list unread references, your examiner might search for those references in your thesis and might raise objections.

In the words of Lawrence Clark Powell – “To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perceptive vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strength”

If you haven’t seen ‘Teen Deviyan’ a 1965 movie starring Dev Anand, Nanda, Kalpana and Simi Grewal, you have missed one of the most entertaining and breezy movies of Bollywood.

In 2012, I decided to give my colleagues a luncheon party while watching an old movie, one of them brought the CD of this movie; we decided to watch it for its ample yet toe tapping songs by fast forwarding the story-line without hoping anything great. But let me tell you, we were in for a pleasant surprise. The 1965 movie is very rhythmic and spellbinding.

Devdutt Anand works in a musical instrument shop as a salesman, and is always late for work. This irritates his boss I.S.Johar to no end. The equation between Dev and Johar changes when Johar finds out that Dev is a talented poet. Johar tells him to write as much poetry he can and that he would get them published. Its simple business for Johar, as Dev becomes famous; Johar’s business will also grow.

While traveling to work in the state transport bus, Dev meets Nanda, who coincidentally lives in his neighborhood. Both are attracted to each other. Once while walking on the road, he assists Kalpana, the actress when her car breaks down. When she realizes that he’s a poet, she arranges a meeting with him. She becomes the second flame in Dev’s life.

Dev is instructed to deliver a piano in a palatial house of a socialite – Radharani (Simi Garewal), she too is attracted to the charm and poetic talent of Devdutt. She invites him for one of her socialite parties, both Dev and Simi get attracted to each other. Simi is the third flame in Dev’s life.  Devdutt cannot make up his mind, whom to marry. He explains each woman that he needs time to make up his mind while all three are more than eager to marry him.

The plot of the movie is absolutely modern and was much ahead of its times when it was made in 1965. All characters in the movie are contemporary and fresh. The movie is clean and engaging.  Dev Anand is not three timing or fooling his heroines. One is homely, one is an actress and one is a high society woman. The high society woman also promises Devdutt a brilliant career, yet, Dev does not go astray.

The final hypnotism scene is shot in colour, rest of the movie is black and white.  And that is the crux of the movie. You have to watch the movie till last to understand how Devdutt makes up his mind – whom to marry.

The movie was directed by Amarjeet, the story idea was of Sadhashiv Brahmam and dialogues were by Vrajendra Gaur; film’s music was given by S.D.Burman and its immortal songs were written by Majrooh Sultanpuri. Each song is superior piece. Starting from Aise to na dekho to Uff  kitani thandi hai ye rut. I mean it friends; each song of this movie is a master piece.

Cuddle up in your sofa, sit with some wafers or popcorns, and watch this movie with your cheerful friends and family. You will thoroughly enjoy three hours. It is a must see for any Hindi film buff, I will rate the movie 9.5 out of 10. There are hardly any dull moments in it.

Those days, in late 60s, Amin Sayani (the legendry Radio Jockey) used to tell the listeners to see the “tuduk” effect. It’s about a boy meetin g a girl but three times (each time a different girl) and giving his heart to the girl. The crisply made love story enlightens viewers with Dev Anand’s lover boy charm, for continuing the flicker with each lady that he meets. His ‘Bhutta’ date with Nanda or his simple car drive date with Kalpana in which she says “tum aam ho kar bhi khaas ho” or his flirty date with Simi in a sexily set sequence, she initiates him into drinking by taking a sip from his glass and declaring, “maine glass ko hoth lagaya hai, ab aapko aur bhi zyaada maza aayega.”

It’s sad that the movie was not received well in 1965. For freaky reasons or may be the audience was not matured enough then. But it’s a treat to all Dev Anand fans even today to watch it after fifty years. Watch it to enjoy it.