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Employee performance management for a small Indian company

Most small Indian companies measure performance once a year, from memory, mostly about the last six weeks. The quiet performer loses, everybody knows it, and the exercise slowly loses its meaning.

What actually needs measuring

Three things, and they answer different questions:

• Delivery — did the work get done, on time, without being sent back? This comes from the record, not from an opinion.
• Responsibility — were the things this person is accountable for actually moved? This is the KRA half, and it needs targets.
• Behaviour — how they work with everybody else. Judged, and honest about being judged.

Why a yearly appraisal fails

Not because managers are lazy. Because human memory is recency-weighted, and twelve months of work does not fit in it. By the time the form is filled in, the only evidence available is what happened recently and what was unusually good or bad. Everything steady and reliable in between is invisible — which is precisely the behaviour you most want to reward.

The fix is not more forms. It is recording the work as it happens, so the appraisal has something to read.

Keeping it fair enough to survive contact with the team

A performance system fails the first time somebody can point at it and say "that is not right". Four rules do most of the work:

• Measure the manager too. If a manager sits on an approval for two weeks, the delay is theirs, not the doer's. A system that only measures downwards gets read as a stick.
• Never count approved leave as lateness. One sanctioned fortnight off should not wreck somebody's year.
• Account for volume. Somebody who finished one easy job should not outrank somebody who carried ten and finished seven on time.
• Show the working. Every number should trace to a named task and a date. If it cannot, do not show the number.

A workable month

1. Work is assigned with an owner, a date and a priority. Nothing lives in a WhatsApp thread that scrolls away.
2. Completion is claimed by the doer and confirmed by whoever asked for it. "Done" is not self-certified.
3. Rework is recorded when work is sent back — this is your quality signal and it costs nothing extra to collect.
4. At month end the delivery half of the score already exists. The manager only has to rate the KRAs and the behaviours.
5. Recognition happens on the day, not at the review. A thank-you six months late is not recognition, it is paperwork.

What to do first

Do not start by writing KRAs for everyone — you will spend three weeks on it and the sheets will be out of date by the time you finish. Start by getting the work itself written down for one department for one month. The KRAs will write themselves once you can see what people actually do.