Human Resource Management:

Comparative Analysis of
Performance Management System
Of Google and Tata Motors

Prepared by:

Hardeep Singh(19 PT2-12)

Javed Khan(19 PT2-14)

Pankaj Jindal(19 PT2-23)

Prasanta Saha(19 PT2-25)

Vipul Bhagat(19 PT2-38)

2
Acknowledgement

We are thankful to Prof. Nidhi Bisht for giving us an opportunity to prepare a

project document on Comparative Analysis of Performance Management System
of Google and Tata Motors. This has been very helpful in understanding the
fundamental concepts of Performance Management and subsequently their
implementations in organizations. This would not have been successful without
her continuous guidance and inputs.

Hardeep Singh(19 PT2-12)

Javed Khan(19 PT2-14)

Pankaj Jindal(19 PT2-23)

Prasanta Saha(19 PT2-25)

Vipul Bhagat(19 PT2-38)

2
Performance Management System:

Performance management is the systematic evaluation of an employee with respect to on jon

performance and the potential for development.

Purpose of Performance Management

 Provides Performance Feedback
 Identification of Potential
 Compensation
 Promotion
 Training & Development

Some Types of PMS currently being used

1. The 360-Degree Appraisal

This involves the use of a questionnaire with regards to the performance of a colleague
where the peer is required to share feedback of the colleague. This feedback can be
considered by the manager while evaluating the performance of the employee.

2. General Performance Appraisal

This involves continuous interaction between the employee and the manager for
continuous setting of goals and in turn achieving them. The employee his then evaluated
accordingly as per the appraisal cycle.

3. Technological/Administrative Performance Appraisal

This technique concentrates on the technical aspects more than others for the
performance on the job as the employees involved may have specialized skills. This is
prevalent in companies that are more oriented with Research and Development (R&D).
They’re judged on the basis of the skills possessed and the activities completed.

4. Manager Performance Appraisal

This involves the feedback of the manager from the subordinate. The performance of a
manager is appraised and this doesn’t just include the performance on the job but also

2
 relationship management with clients. Generally, feedback is received anonymously
which are then considered for appraisal.

5. Employee Self-Assessment
This method is very unpopular among employees since it is difficult to actually rate one’s
own self. The self-assessment sheet is compared the manager’s assessment of the
employee and the differences / gaps are then discussed.

6. Project Evaluation Review

This involves the performance appraisal of team members involved in a project at the
end of that project instead of being done annually as is done in most other cases. This
can help the team and its members develop on an ongoing basis with each project.

7. Sales Performance Appraisal

Generally, sales personnel are evaluated on the basis of sales skills and accomplishment
of financial goals or sales targets that have been set previously. Goals set in case of
sales should be realistic and methods of achieving them are to be decided between the
employee and the manager.

2
Tata Motors:

Some facts in brief about the company:

 Established in 1945
 More than 80,000 employees
 More than 12 Lac vehicles sold
 6,600 Sales and Service points
 Tata Motors is ranked 265th on the Fortune Global 500 list 
 Revenue of US$42 billion, approximately 30% of Tata Group
 44% market share in commercial segment and 5.6% in passenger segment

TATA MOTORS Ideologies

VISION: To be the world class corporate constantly furthering the interest of all stakeholder

HR VISION: Lead and Facilitate continuous change towards organizational excellence; create a
learning and vibrant organization with high sense of pride amongst its members

APPRAISAL:
 New Appraisal System based on KRAs & Targets·
 Review of Targets at regular Intervals
 People Development an important KRA

REWARD:
 Promotions based on Performance
 Productivity & Profit-linked Incentive Schemes·
 Training including Long-term Term

CAREER DESIGN:
 Performance & Potential Based Appraisals
 FTSS: Fast Track Option for High performers: 10-12 Yr leap
 Promotions after Managers Vacancy based
 Interviews for promotions above Managers
 Selection of Supervisors: – Performance / Attendance / Discipline record

2
  Job rotation – including inter functional

Appraisal System:
 Annual Appraisal system (Apr – Mar)
 Feedback is shared half yearly
 Necessary steps for employees who deviate
 Yearly Salary revision
 Annual promotions (as applicable) / designation hikes
 6 - 8 % of the compensation is variable pay 

Goal Setting: S.M.A.R.T. Goals 

 Specific – precise and detailed 
 Measurable – with criteria for determining progress and success 
 Achievable – attainable and action-oriented 
 Realistic – relevant and aligned 
 Time-related – grounded within a time-frame 

Appraisal System

1. Till 2011: The system was known as Performance Measurement System (PMS) and
was based on traditional performance management techniques.

2. 2012 – 2017: Migration to a new system for Performance Management was done and the
system was called as Performance Appraisal & Coaching Tool or PACT in short. This
system of performance evaluation focussed primarily on the achievement if business
goals by the employee. As per this system there was a necessity to stick to the bell curve
while evaluating the employees. Also, as per this system the performance incentives or
annual bonuses was linked only to the grade that was being achieved as against the
exact performance percentage achieved in the evaluation by the employee.

3. From 2018 onwards: Currently the system being used for performance management is
called as LOOP and it focuses on the contemporary techniques to achieve the best
employee productivity. In this system of performance evaluation, equal weightage was
given to business goals as well as behavioural goals like customer satisfaction, agility,
motivation, team work, etc. As per this system there is no explicit necessity to stick to the

2
 bell curve while evaluating the employees, however, as has been seen in recent times
there may be some intrinsic factors that lead to evaluations that may at times still
resemble a bell curve. Also, another point of difference was that to focus more on
employee motivation the performance incentives or annual bonuses was linked not just
to the grade that was achieved but also the exact performance percentage achieved in
the evaluation by the employee.

LOOP
 Goal Setting: At the start of the year
 Mid-Year Review: In Mid-Year. Also, option is available to change the goals during this
time.
 End Term Review: At the end of the year:
 Rating is done both by the employees (self-rating) as well as the reporting managers
(appraiser). The managers rating is in the region of 70% to 150%
 The combination of both these scores are converted in percentage terms to arrive at the
overall annual performance rating for the employee:
o 125 – 150 %  Grade A (Far Exceeds Goals)
o 110 – 125 %  Grade B (Exceeds Goals)
o 95 – 110 %  Grade C+ (Expectations met)
o 70 – 95 %  Grade C (Satisfactory)
o Less than 70% Grade D (Needs improvement)
 Employees getting a D rating is given a target of 3 Months to improve based on a
development plan. However, if the same is not achieved some of the steps outlined
below may be initiated:
o Reallocation / Transfer to an area that better matches the skill set of the particular
employee
o Promotions may be put on hold in extreme cases
 Another USP of the LOOP system of performance evaluation is the closure of the loop.
After the performance rating the acceptance of the employee is required to close the
loop. In case the employee is not satisfied with the rating then the company may arrange
a meeting with the reporting manager as well as the HR to better explain the situation
and highlight the improvement areas.

2
Google:
Some facts in brief about the company:
 Founded in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page
 Subsidiary of the holding company Alphabet Inc.
 More than 70 percent of worldwide online search requests are handled by Google
 Its headquarters are in Mountain View, California
 Numerous products across the hardware and software domain
 Valued at more than 1 Trillion USD

Google’s people operations cornerstones:

 Hiring only the best:
Selecting the best fit candidates amongst the most talented pool of candidates
worldwide. If for some reason this cannot achieved be reasonably the in order to achieve
100% perfection in hiring only the best fits, errors are skewed towards false negatives
(eventually passing on a great candidate) instead of having any false positives (the
possibility of eventually hiring a bad fit)
 Creating a meritocratic environment:
The best performers are correctly identified and rewarded

 Developing employees to their full potential

This is done through great people management and on-the-job coaching (e.g. Project
Oxygen) peer-to-peer and outside training, and through a comprehensive 360-degree
feedback collection process

The HR practices at Google have become the industry benchmark and it is quite obvious that
even smaller, less resourceful companies can greatly benefit from using Google as a starting
point for their own practices, and then iterating on that based on the specific requirements.

Google’s Performance Management System:

 Annual performance review (including mid-year review)
 Monthly performance check-ins: (part of regular 1:1 meetings that also comprise other
themes such as career development, coaching, personal issues, etc.

2
  Googlegeist engagement survey: this spans much more than just the regular
engagement axes, but measures basically everything that’s is necessary.
 Annual Upward Feedback Survey: a feedback review (similar to 360 degree review)
where only the supervisors are reviewed by their direct subordinates, and it is based on
Google’s Project Oxygen
 OKRs, or objectives and key-results which is similar but not the same as Management-
by-Objectives
 Meritocracy, or compensating people unequally based on performance: This is done
through bonuses, equity stock options, grants and prizes for good performance reviews

Performance Reviews
Google’s annual performance review cycle is consists of two parts: a “preview”, at the end of the
first semester, and a complete end review, that usually happens between the months of October
and November, and which happens simultaneously with the company’s 360-degree feedback
collection process.
Managers take two main things under consideration when evaluating their employees’
performance ratings: results attained, which is basically what the employee accomplished, and
behaviours, or how the employee had managed to attain the result. The employee starts with a
self-assessment, which is followed by peer-reviews, which are only visible to managers
(reviewees may have access only to the anonymized content of peer reviews).
On the review side, Google employees are asked to review each other, and their direct reports,
according to the following criteria:
 Googleyness
This is basically a measure whether the employee’s values are in line with that of
Google’s.
This forms the most important component of the “how” axis.

 Problem solving
This is basically a measure of the Analytical skills of the employee that are applied to
work situations to achieve the desired results

 Execution (high quality work with little guidance)

Delivering good quality work without the necessity of too much hand-holding from
managers and peers (autonomy).

2
  Thought leadership
This is basically a measure of how much an employee is seen as a benchmark for a
given niche of expertise. As Google grows in size, these niches may tend to become
smaller, however, Google still wants employees that are go-to resources for specific
themes, training colleagues on tech-talks, training customers, and producing high-quality
content.

 Leadership (or emerging leadership):

Even though many young Googlers have very little exposure to managing complex
teams, everybody is required, to show emerging leadership skills, such as taking the lead
of problems and projects, being pro-active, and owning results personally.

 Presence
Presence is the ability of the employee to make himself/herself heard in an increasingly
large organization, and is therefore intimately related to emerging leadership.

Self-Evaluation
 First step in the performance review
 Employee evaluates himself in 5 grades based on the criteria mentioned above. These
grades range from “never demonstrates” to “always demonstrates”
 The employees are encouraged to share examples that support these grades
 Highlights main accomplishments of last cycle (in a text field limited to 512 characters).
These accomplishments will appear to 360 degree reviewers (peers) who are asked to
reviewee’s impact on the results

360-degree Feedback
 Gives managers holistic picture of direct reports and avoids manager biases
 Starts with a back-and-forth between employee and manager
 Employee suggested shortlist of peer reviewers discussed and validated with the
manager
 Peers expected to give assessments in three areas: strengths, weaknesses and rating
on the five criteria discussed above, as well as commenting on the reviewee’s
contribution to specific projects.

2
  Simplification of Ratings: The open ended fields (positives and negatives) has been
observed to simplify and reduced the time spent on this step by more than 25%, while
improving the share of participants who perceived it as useful from 49% to 75%.

Calibration
After data collection from self-evaluation and peer evaluation and once the results have been
understood the managers draft a rating for the employees based on the scale shown below:
 Needs improvement
 Consistently meets expectations
 Exceeds expectations
 Strongly exceeds expectations
 Superb

After the managers have drafted the rating they are then subsequently calibrated.

As described by Laszlo Bock (SVP, People Operations, Google):

“The soul of performance assessment is calibration… A manager assigns a draft rating to an
employee – say, ‘exceeds expectations’- based on mainly OKRs but tempered by other
activities, like the volume of interviews completed, or extenuating circumstances such as a shift
in the economy that might have affected ad revenues. Before his draft rating becomes final,
groups of managers sit down together and review all of their employees’ draft ratings together in
a process we call calibration… A group of five to ten managers meet and project on a wall their
fifty to a Thousand employees, discuss individuals, and agree on a fair rating. This allows us to
remove the pressure managers may feel from employees to inflate ratings. It also ensures that
the end results reflect a shared expectation of performance, since managers often have
different expectations for their people and interpret performance standards in their own
idiosyncratic manner… Calibration diminishes bias by forcing managers to justify their decisions
too one another. It also increases perceptions of fairness among employees.”

Calibration, is therefore of crucial importance in ensuring the fairness of performance ratings.

It’s where heavy-handed raters are identified and discounted for vice-versa.

2
Outputs
Calibration meetings output employee’s performance rating for the review cycle.
After the feedback has been closed the managers go on to hold two meetings:
 Feedback given to employee by manager taking into account both manager’s and peer’s
view points
 The second meeting is where Compensation & Promotion decisions communicated
However, the Feedback meeting and Compensation meeting at least 1 month apart from each
other for quality purposes:
Google understands that a compensation-focused employee is no good a listener of feedback,
whether compensation expectations were not met, met, or exceeded. This is because the
employees generally focus on the extrinsic reward – a raise, higher rating – and learning shuts
down, defeating the purpose of the evaluation. Hence at Google, pay and feedback]
conversations at the same time.

2
Comparative Analysis

Tata Motors Google

Annual Increment Linked to rating Linked to rating

Promotion Linked to rating Linked to rating

Monthly performance
Conversation & Feedback Half yearly feedback
check-ins

Methodology Followed 90 Degree 360 Degree

5 Point Scale 5 Point Scale

Calibration
(No Calibration) Calibrated
Time taken for EOYR Min 1 Month gap b/w
No such criteria
process Feedback and pay revision

As we can see that even though both Tata Motors and Google are huge companies the
performance management system being employed at Google is more comprehensive and may
as a result lead to better employee motivation and results.

One of the important aspects to note here is the calibration process that is being employed at
Google may lead to the reduction of bias to a greater extent and hence ensure more accurate
and fairer reviews.