What are the various degrees of performance appraisal methods (90, 180, 270, 360, 540 & 720 degree appraisals)?

An organization's success depends on its ability to correctly measure the performance of its employees and use that to boost and optimize their performance in an effective manner. Performance appraisal is an important tool in the hands of personal management to achieve organisational objectives.

There are different methods used by organisations, to conduct performance appraisals at work -

90 Degree Appraisal - This the most basic form of performance appraisal. Under this method, the employee receives feedback from his / her manager / supervisor. There is no self - assessment.

180 Degree Appraisal - This appraisal method includes a self assessment i.e the employee will also provide feedback for himself / herself along with managers feedback.

270 Degree Appraisal - 270 Degree appraisal includes three stakeholders - Manager, Self and peer / subordinates.

360 Degree Appraisal - 360 degree feedback survey often called a multi - rater feedback survey, provides employee with feedback from their direct reports/subordinates, managers, peers/colleagues, and external stakeholders (clients, customers, etc.) along with self assessment. The primary reason to do this full circle confidential review is to provide information about ones performance from multiple perspectives, areas of strength as well as areas of improvement.

540 Degree Appraisal - Generally, a 540 degree feedback is said to include the external stakeholders (customers or clients) while receiving feedback. However, the term is less widespread and many organizations include customer/client feedback in a ‘360-degree feedback’ 540 degree appraisal.

720 Degree Appraisal - Simply put, 720 degree feedback is 360 degree appraisal conducted twice. Its a pre and a post intervention exercise conducted to carry out a comparative analysis and evaluation of employee performance aiming at further improvement. After the first round of 360 survey, reports are analysed and targets are set for future, development initiatives (TNAs. etc) are taken up by the management to improve employee competence levels, this is then followed by the second round (held after some time interval) where the results are compared against the first 360 appraisal, indicating the amount of improvement achieved. A 720 degree appraisal thus involves 2 rounds of a 360 degree feedback - providing performance feedback to employees & helping them improve and achieve goals set for them.


A feedback method true to business needs & objectives of an organisation should be selected to run successful performance appraisals.