Hi Aswin,

The performance Appraisal system of any organisation should aim at improving the current level of performance of individual to a desired level of performance so that the organisations goals are acheived.

Now the important factor of Performance Appraisal are : Desired Performance (w.r.t Organisation Goal) , Current Level of Performance (Thru Performance Appraisal), Setting of Organisational Goals.

So your questionnaire can have the following areas covered :
- Any vision/mission/values of your company
-How the organisations goals are being set
-How the organisational goals/ targets are cascaded to individual level goals
- How the target for individual for the assessment period are set.
- What are the scale of ratings
-Employees awareness about the Appraisal system
-Relationship of Appraisal system with reward & recognition
-How the appraisal results are being used in MPP/Job rotations/Transfers
-The feedback mechanism to the employee about his performance under the system
-How the appraisal system is being used to develop the individual (Training & development)
-Who can appraise an employee
-Scope of the Appraisal system
-Whether on-ilen system / interview system / Confidential ACR system

These points can be looked into while preparing your questionnaire, they can be broken into smaller points (question) also. Always try to prepare questions with multiple answer i.e. the way you want the replies to come. No scope for ldescriptive answers, only objective type questions.

I hope above inputs will be helpful to you.

Santosh Gupta