*Professor, Symbiosis Centre for Management Studies (UG), Symbiosis International University, Pune
Performance Appraisal is a tool to assess an individual's competencies and training needs. It entails evaluation of the performance of all personnel such as employees, supervisors and managers, so that they can be trained and developed for facing present and future challenges. However, it tends to become a ritual to be done with a minimum of time investment. Hence, this study was conducted to establish the adequacy/inadequacy of the performance appraisal system in two companies of the automobile industry, to assess whether it is human resource development oriented and to evaluate whether it is effectively implemented. Two of the largest automobile manufacturing companies in our country, TATA Motors and Bajaj Auto were selected. The Random Sampling method was used to select 100 middle level managers from the two organizations. Results showed that managers in both organizations felt that there definitely existed a good performance appraisal system in their organization and that it was HRD oriented. However, its implementation was found lacking. On comparison, TATA Motors scored higher than Bajaj Auto on all aspects revealing that managers in TATA Motors were more satisfied with the existence and implementation of the performance appraisal system in their organization than were those in Bajaj Auto. To conclude it can be said that performance appraisal still has a long way to go before it reaches a satisfactory acceptance level.
