Performance Development

Overview and Context

The pandemic forced the organizations to shift to remote working. The organizations are evaluating the
working models as workplaces are opening up across countries gradually.

As quoted in a McKinsey article, “The ad-hoc experiment with large-scale remote working during the
pandemic revealed a number of productivity benefits. Our research found that a few months into the
pandemic, 45 percent of employees reported working more productively. Unfortunately, that improvement
came at the cost of a blurred work-life boundary and increased symptoms of grief, anxiety, and
burnout. Companies are acknowledging the need for in-person connectivity to repair our frayed social
fabric. Many are trying to offset some of the negative effects through more people-centered and HR
practices. However, they are also concerned about a decline in productivity with the new hybrid model.”
(https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/the-organization-blog/the-future-
of-work-managing-three-risks-of-the-hybrid-workplace)

A report by Microsoft Research also calls out the realities of hybrid working that need to inform the
design of HR processes and policies. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/hybrid-
work

“Self-assessed productivity has remained the same or higher for many employees over the past year, but
at a human cost. One in five global survey respondents say their employer doesn’t care about their work-
life balance. Fifty-four percent feel overworked. Thirty-nine percent feel exhausted. And trillions of
productivity signals from Microsoft 365 quantify the precise digital exhaustion workers are feeling”

As the HR leadership team of an India based organization, how would you go about transforming
a Performance Development framework to make it more relevant and effective in the new normal?

Approach

We need to adopt an agile approach to problem solving and solutioning, with five key stages -
Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test/ Pilot and only then, Implementation-at-Scale of the
final solution

In the Empathize stage, we need to deep-dive on Performance Development to gather context and
understand the needs of various stakeholders through ethnographic research in the organization. This will
enable us to define the needs and insights from diverse lenses and arrive at an aligned understanding of
the challenges. We also should do industry research to assimilate thought leadership and best practices
being adopted by other organizations to create impactful Performance Development processes as well as
enable the right technology, culture, behaviors to facilitate desirable, feasible, viable and sustainable
change.

CASE WORK

Step 1. Identify an organization which is well known in India and has an employee headcount greater
than 100. Go through the website and any other articles to understand the HR priorities and talent
processes in the organization.

Step 2. Define who the key user/& stakeholders in the organization would be as far as Performance
Development processes are concerned.

Step 3: Create one persona depicting an employee segment based on secondary research as well as
your primary research. Reflect on the needs and meanings. Reflect on ecosystem and interactions.
Reflect on relations and flows. Create an empathy map and employee persona outlining key motivations
and challenges. Remember, a persona is an archetype based on similarities in behaviors, needs and
meanings.

Step 4: Define the journey map of the employee’s experience with the existing Performance
Development process. Identify the key touchpoints during the performance year and associated
emotions/ highs and lows.
Prioritize touchpoint/s based on the scope and opportunity for impacting the employee experience with
the Performance Development process, especially in context of the hybrid working realities.

Step 5: Articulate a the PoV statement for your employee persona. Then, define the related HMW
statement/s.
Remember, you need to have a clear connection across your employee persona, journey map, prioritized
touchpoints, PoV statement/s and HMW statement/s. DO NOT IDEATE OR SOLUTION! UNDERSTAND
YOUR USER/ STAKEHOLDER AND THE PROBLEM FIRST. INVEST TIME AND EFFORT IN PRIMARY
RESEARCH TO ARRIVE AT AUTHENTIC & COMPELLING INSIGHTS.

Next Steps: Will be shared in the subsequent lecture.