Performance Appraisal Method Used in Top 10 IT Companies-360 Degree Feedback & Balanced Score Card: A Review

India is the world's largest sourcing destination for the IT industry, accounting for approximately 52% of US $ 124-130 billion market. India employs about 10 million Indians and continues to contribute significantly to the economic transformation of the country. Hence IT sector is considered to be one of the highest contributing sectors towards GDP. Being such an opportunity driven sector, attrition rate in this sector is also quiet high. In addition to that the attrition rate with respect to dissatisfaction in the performance appraisal methods used is 18.7%. Thus performance appraisal methods used in the organization plays a vital role in determining the employee's performance, as well as the satisfaction level of the employee towards the performance appraisal method used. It is considered to be one of the important factors motivating the employees to perform on par or above the standard set. This paper is a study of performance appraisal methods used by the top 10 IT companies (based on revenue-2014) which includes - TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Tech Mahindra, HCL Technologies, Mphasis, Oracle Financial Services, Mindtree, Polaris Technology and Rolta India sequentially. Coincidentally these companies use either 360 degree feedback or Balanced Score Card. Thus this paper is a review of 360 degree feedback and balanced score card, analyzing its advantages, disadvantages and reasons for using the method.