Company Analysis2

1 Performance Appraisal in Government
PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL IN GOVERNMENT OF

INDIA: CASE ANALYSIS OF INDIAN ORDNANCE
FACTORY SERVICES
Submitted to:
Prof. Santhi Perumal

Performance Appraisal in Government: Case Analysis of IOFS
CASE ANALYSIS OF INDIAN ORDNANCE
FACTORY SERVICES (IOFS)
Submitted by:
Aditi Singh
Akanksha Baiwar
Gunjan Nagpal
Monish kumar Attri
Batch of 2013-15
CASE ANALYSIS OF INDIAN ORDNANCE
Submitted by:
Aditi Singh 2013010
Akanksha Baiwar 2013014
Gunjan Nagpal 2013106
Monish kumar Attri - 2013157
2 Performance Appraisal in Government: Case Analysis of IOFS
On the very outset of this report, we would like to extend our sincere & heartfelt obligation
towards all the personages who have helped us in this endeavour. Without their active
guidance, cooperation & encouragement, we would not have made headway in thisproject.
We are ineffably indebted to Mr. Deepankar Majumdar (IOFS), Senior Director,
National Academy of Defence Production, Nagpur for his conscientious guidance and
encouragement to accomplish this assignment. We would show our gratitude to Ms. Shanthi
Perumal for providing us with such a wonderful opportunity.
We especially extend our gratitude to IOFB, Ministry Of Defence for giving us this
opportunity.
Thanking You
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
CONTENTS
Company Analysis 04
Performance Appraisal in IOFS 07
Affecting Biases and their Rectification 11
HR Interview 12
Suggestions 14
COMPANY ANALYSIS
Indian Ordnance Factories, which is a conglomerate of 41 factories, 9 training institutes, 3
regional marketing centres and 4 regional controller of Safety, is a giant industrial setup which
functions under the Department of Defence Production of theMinistry of Defence.
Today OFB along with its subsidiary factories is responsible for the provision of the following
services:
A broad and versatile production that is made obtainable through the multi-technology
capability of the machinery;
State of the art manufacturing facility as provided by the factories and stated by the
IOFB;
The support of the skilled and professionally qualified manpower and managerial
personnel;
Strict adherence to quality standard (all the units are ISO-9000 certified) as well as
the safety provisions;
Original as well as adaptive research & development;
A strong base for industrial training facilities, and
Ready market access due to convenient location.
The factories are spread geographically over 24 different locations in the expanse of various
states of India. They are responsible for the production of the sophisticated and complex
products. These products are accessed by the armed forces and their usage spans across a
wide and exhaustive catalogue of items. Be it the production of pistols/Revolvers; civilian
arms and ammunitions; weapons; explosives, propellants and chemicals; military and
armoured vehicles; optical devices and supporting equipments; parachutes; materials,
components and SPMs; the factories which are governed by the ordnance factory board
produce them all. The production of these items require an advanced technology and they the
manufacturing process covers a wide spectrum of engineering - Mechanical, Electrical,
Metallurgical, Chemical, Textile, Leather, Optics and Electronics. The main aim of the OFB
and the associating factories is to provide its customers with the world class products and
without compromising with the safety aspects of the products and processes.
While the prime customers of Indian Ordnance Factories are the Indian Armed Forces, It also
caters to its other customers like Central Paramilitary Forces and State Police Forces in
respect of the Arms, Ammunition, Clothing, Bullet Proof Vehicles and Mine Protected
Vehicles etc. Increase in volume of Export, as an extension to its functioning remains an
important objective of Ordnance Factories.
The factories under the OFB are managed by the Group A gazetted defence-civilian officers
under the umbrella of the defence ministry. IOFS is a multi-disciplinary composite cadre
which is bifurcated into:
1. Non-technical/administrative- Selected through Indian Administrative Services
examination conducted by UPSC; and
2. Technical It includes engineers (Civil, Electrical, Mechanical, and Electronics) who
are selected through Engineering services examination conducted by UPSC, and
technologists (Chemical, Metallurgical, Textile, Leather) who are selected via
interviews by UPSC ;
The doctors (Surgeonsand Physicians) serving in OFB belong to a separate service known as
the Indian Ordnance Factories Health Service (IOFHS). They are selected by UPSC through
Combined Medical Examination. IOFHS officers are responsible for the maintenance of
health of the employees and the hospitals of OFB. They report directly to the IOFS officers.
IOFS and IOFHS are the only two civil services under the Department of Defence
Production. The finance and accounts wing in the Ordinance factories are independent cells
and are managed by theofficers of IDAS (Indian defence Accounts Services).

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL SYSTEM IN IOFS
The employees in OFB and the concerned factories have a fixed Pay scale based on their pay
bands that has been decided by the Central government and it is continuously upgraded on
the basis of the their performance. The performance appraisal management in the Ordnance
factories is performed on the basis of an APAR i.e. the Annual performanceappraisal report.
Earlier known as the Annual Confidential Report (ACR) which was modified to APAR after
the Supreme Court Of India judgement on the Dev Dutt VS Union Of India Case that the
object of writing the confidential reports and making entries is to give the opportunity to the
Public Servantsto improve their performance.
This landmark judgement led to the path for the development of the APAR which was
recommended by the 2
nd
Administrative Reforms Commission in their 10
th
Report. The
APAR allowed the officer to get the knowhow of the overall grade that is assigned to him as
well as the assessment of his/her integrity in the form of the remarks provided by the
Reviewing authority or the Accepting authority (whichever systemis in vogue). This even
gave the opportunity to the concerned officer to make any representations against the entries
and the final grading that is given in the report within the period of 15 days in case of a
disparity or a bias. This system of judging the employees performance through APAR was
made effective starting from 1
st
April 2009.
If we further elaborate upon the system of APAR, its ideology is encompassed in the interest
if the service as well as the interest of the officer. The primary endeavour of the APAR is to
measure the potentialities of the concerned officer, provide him a proper feedback devoid of
any bias as well as to improve the performance of his present job. The reporting officer who
provides the concerned officer with the comments has to have a 3 months experience of
having supervised the work on the basis of which he can provide the supervision to his
subordinate. The APAR also includes the section of self-appraisal in which the concerned
officer provides an appraisal to himself. If the concerned officer has delayed the Self
appraisal which has to be submitted to the reporting officer on whomhe may or might not
base his appraisal (on his discretion), the reporting officer can submit the appraisal without
included the concerned officers self appraisal. After the reporting officer writes the feedback
and grades the concerned officer accordingly, the report is submitted to the reviewing
authority who further reviews the report to avoid any form of the bias.
If we go on to define performance appraisal, then we can state it as the formal, structured
system of measuring and evaluating an employees job, the related behaviour and outcomes
as to discover how and why the employee is presently performing on the job and how the
employee can perform more effectively in the future so that the employee, organisation, and
society can all benefit (Prof. Randell S. Schullar, School Of Management and Labour
Relations). Performance appraisal in any organisation is performed at a specific period. It can
be done annually or half yearly or quarterly or maybe even regularly. This depends upon the
nature or size of the organisation, and sometimes on the necessity of the managers so as to
decide the period of performance appraisal of their employees. Most of organisations are
insisting employee appraisal should be a continuous process and should not be limited to a
formal review once a year. Primarily in the IOFS, the performance appraisal is an annual
process owing to the fact that all the targets that are set by the organisation are done on the
annual basis. But, the report can be written multitude of times as well within the year
depending on the demand. There is no objection to two or more independent reports being
written within the year by two or more reporting officers. If more than one independent report
is written, then the pre-condition is that they should clearly specify the time period covered
within them. There are certain other prerequisites tothe reporting and reviewing of the APAR
that has been stated by the reforms commission. They are as follows:
1. The reporting officer and the reviewing officer ought to have the experience in the
field of work of the concerned officer of at least 3 months, and then only they will be
eligible for grading the concerned officer. This decision has been keeping the fact in
the mind that the reporting and the reviewing officer must have a prior experience to
judge in the same field of work as the concerned officer to judge him without bias. As
the report as well as the gradation contained within the report is extremely essential to
the concerned officer as well as to his career, such decision should be taken with
utmost care and should be made only by the specialists in this field.
2. In case no reporting authority has had the experience of 3 months, then the report is
initiated by the reviewing authority as the reporting authority. In that scenario the
reviewing officer will submit the report to his senior for the review after performing
the gradation for the final appraisal of the report.
3. The reviewing authority can even review the report of his subordinates until 1 month
of his retirement and not beyond that.
4. Similarly, if there no availability of a reviewing officer who has an experience of at
least 3 months, then the section in the APAR concerned with the reviewing authority
is left blank with an appropriate note that is left for the next reviewing officer. Since it
is mandatory to have the review of the two officers in the report, so such situations
should be necessarily avoided.
5. If the reporting/Reviewing officer are on the suspension when the annual Performance
appraisal Report is being written/reviewed, then the it can be written/reviewed by the
officer concerned within two months from the date of his having been placed under
suspension or within one month from the date on which the report is due, whichever
comes first.
6. In case of misrepresentation in the report, the concerned officer has the got the power
to appeal against the final gradation but it should be performed well within the 30
days after the report has been reported and reviewed by the officers.
If we analyse the contents of the report, the report is primarily bifurcated into various
sections depending on the position of the employee concerned in the government.
SL. NO. DIVISION CONTENTS
1. NON-INDUSTRAIL
EMPLOYEES OF IOFS
PART-1 which includes the Personal Data.
Part 1A includes the training and
development section
PART 1B includes the section on training
needs assessment.
PART-2 which incorporates the section on
Self Appraisal.
PART-3 which involves the Assessment by
the reporting Officer
PART-4 which consists of the section on
Remarks by the Reviewing Officer
2. J UNIOR TIME SCALE/ SR. TIME
SCALE/ SR. TIME SCALE (NF)
PART-2which involves the Assessment by
the reporting Officer. It includes the
following sections: Assessment of Work
Output, Assessment of Personal Attributes
and Assessment of Functional Competence.
Remarks by the Reviewing Authority.
PART 4 includes the section of the
accepting authority.
3. J UNIOR ADMINISTRATIVE
GRADE
SAME AS ABOVE
4. SENIOR ADMINISTRATIVE
GRADE
SAME AS ABOVE
5. INDIAN ORDNANCE FACTORY
HEALTH SERVICES (IOFHS)
OFFICERS
PART-2 which involves the Assessment by
the self appraisal. .
Remarks by the Reporting Authority.
Remarks by the Reviewing Authority.
PART-5 includes the remarks of the Senior
Reviewing Authority.
PART-6 includes the section of the
accepting authority.
PART 7 includes the section titled the
Numerical Grading
This is the general categorisation of the Annual Performance Appraisal Report as per the
grades and ranks of the officers.
BIASES THAT MIGHT AFFECT THE APPRAISAL AND THE WAY OF
RECTIFYING THEM AS PER THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
THE BIASES THAT MIGHT MAR THE JUDGEMENT OF THE REPORTING AND THE
REVIEWING AUTHORITY
a.) First Impression Effect (primacy effect) The reporting authority might form an
overall impression about the concerned officer (ratee) on the basis of some particular
characteristics of the concerned officer identified that they identify with , and this forms the
basis of their appraisal. This leads to the bias on the part of the Reporting authority or the
rater.
b.) Halo Effect and Horn Effect: The concerned officers performance might be
appraised on the basis of a perceived positive quality of the concerned officer by the
reporting authority, be it a feature or a trait. This will lead to a bias when the reporting
authority rates the concerned officer extremely high in other traits as well if he is extra-
ordinarily high in one particular trait. As opposed to the Halo effect, the Horn effect enables
the reporting authority to judge the performance of the concerned officer on the basis of a
negative quality or feature perceived within the individual by him. This results in an overall
lower rating than may be warranted.
c.) Excessive Stiffness or Lenience: Depending upon the personal standards of the
reporting officer, his values and mental makeup at the time of appraisal, the concerned officer
might be rated very strictly or leniently. The leniency error can render a system ineffective, if
left uncorrected.
d.) Personal Biases: The way a reporting authority feels about the concerned officer-
whether he likes or dislikes him/her - as a tremendous effect on the rating of his /her
performances. Personal Bias can stem from various sources as a result of information
obtained from colleagues, considerations of faith and thinking, social and family background
and so on.
Therefore while appraising performances; all the above biases should necessarily be avoided.
So, the Government of India enables the concerned officer can even put up representations
against the final grading, if any disparity happens. It even gives the provision to the
reviewing for the re-appraisal of the report after it is graded by the reporting officer. Only the
reviewing authority gives the final grade which can even be challenged by the concerned
officer if he/she thinks it to be prejudiced, but he/she has to do so within 15 days of the final
gradation.
AN HR INTERVIEW
To understand further about the appraisal system at IOFS, we spoke with a 1988 cadre civil
servant Mr Deepankar Majumdar, who is currently the Senior Director at National
Academy Of Defence Production. Endowed with an dynamic personality and having an in
depth knowledge on various subjects, he was a gem of a person to talk with. Being a PG
student of Economics from Delhi School Of Economics, he is a highly intelligent and
educated individual which was definitely visible in this dialogues with us.

Ques. 1: What are the biases negatively affecting the judgement of the grading as well as
the reporting officer, while they write the APAR of their subordinate officer? Are any time-
to-time discussion carried out with the employees?
There are no personal biases involved of the performance appraisal of the employees, since it
is a two-tier organization. Also, if there are any flaws found in the report, it can be appealed
against by the concerned subordinate to the particular Tribunal established for the same. It is
a bureaucratic organization, participation in the decision making is not encouraged much
from the subordinate officers. The responsibilities of each individual are restricted to his/her
own job profile, as their own responsibilities are so heavy, so coming up with a new
suggestion is not practiced much. The feedback is given to the employees, and is devoid of
any bias. The self-appraisals are also conducted, but are more for the understanding of the
employees but do not contribute much to any constructive discussions between the superiors
and the employees.
This pertains to the characteristic of openness, as there is not much openness in the current
performance management system of this organization, and the acceptability is also
negligible. This means that the feature of inclusiveness is also lacking in the organization,
because the employees inputs about their own performance are not invited. The correct-
ability feature is also included as there is an appeals process to challenge any unjust
decisions.
Ques. 2: Can APAR be replaced with the SPARROW as a possibility in future?
SPARROW is an online performance appraisal system for the IAS grade officers. It is
presently not being followed in civil services, but only for the IAS level officers. Up-
gradation of the functioning is currently being followed in various government organizations
(providing laptops and automating processes), which makes this a good time to implement
something like SPARROW in our organization as well. Also, the paper-pen mode becoming
redundant now a days, and SPARROW being online would also decrease the delay in
processes with a huge amount.
If SPARROW is implemented in the organization, then it would ensure standardization in
the organization. The system would be more reliable, as there would be less errors, and the
measures of performance would be more consistent. Since the software would be accessible
to the employees for a longer time, so they would have specific detailsabout what all are the
expectation that are required to be met. This system would be more practical than the APAR
system, as it would be easier to use, more error free and readily available, and less redundant.
This shows that its benefits outweigh its costs.
Ques. 3: What might be the possible hurdles in the implementation of an APAR system for
civil servants?
We usually observe that there is certain lack of interest on the part of the superiors to carry
out the necessary evaluations and appraisals, which might be because of the reason that they
might find it tedious, and they might not find it relevant. The performance is not incentivised,
so this lack of interest mentioned above comes into picture. Reluctance to fill the
performance appraisal form is the major hurdle faced by us.
From this we can say that the employees or the reviewers do not find performance appraisal
of the organization meaningful, and find that they are not much used in the administrative
decisions. This also leads to no distinction between effective and ineffective performance.
Also, the reviewers do not find it congruent with the current culture of the organization.
Ques. 4: Do you think the incorporation of Annual Medical Examination Report in the
Provisional APAR a feasible plan - as suggested by the 2
nd
Administrative Reforms
Commission in their 10
th
Report? 12
Yes, the incorporation of Annual Medical Examination report is a feasible plan, as this would
ensure that the validity of the performance management system. This would ensure better
discharge of duties by the employees if they have been declared medically fit.
SOME SUGGESTIONS
Rather than simply using the APAR as a means for promotionbased decisions, it can
as well be used for the purpose of motivating the civil servants through AWARDS
and PERFORMANCE BASED INCENTIVES. E.g. Employees with grading 8 plus,
should be given a cash award. They should as well be given a benefit of 4 %
increment rather than the usual 3%(which every civil servant receives).

This provisional APAR should include the annual medical examination report as well.
These pre-existing instructions ought to be incorporated as it will help the officers to
understand their medical condition. This will indirectly improve the performance of
the civil servants as their health conditions will be better.
The government should take an initiative of automating the appraisal system for other
cadres as well, so that issues related to biases is rectified as well as officers are able to
access their fair appraisal at any time in an year. E.g., for Railways. Income Tax,
IOFS, Forest services, IPS etc.

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1 Performance Appraisal in Government

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL IN GOVERNMENT OF

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