Indranil Sen-Co-Founder, Head of Growth & New Ventures at AlterEGO Accelerators

Indranil, also known as “Neil,” is an executive alumni of the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. With over 25 years of experience, he has led People and Culture initiatives across sectors like BFSI, BPO, IT, Healthcare, Retail, and Manufacturing. He has held global roles at IBM and Whirlpool Corporation, and helped scale Indian start-ups like Lenskart.com into global brands.

Recognized as an industry veteran, Indranil has expertise in Global HR Shared Services Operations, including Staffing, Payroll, Compliance, and HR technology. In 2023, he was named one of the “Top 100 Great Managers” in India and received the ‘Excellence in Mentoring’ award from HR Bharat National HR Association.

Neil is a certified HR Excellence Assessor by CII, a POSH trainer, a Diversity & Inclusion Professional, a Google-certified Project Management Professional, and a Lean practitioner, known for driving measurable, world-class outcomes.

Performance Management has evolved over the last couple of decades from a process that has been gripped employees in “fear of the unknown” after a year’s hard work to evolving as a logical and statistical process adopting techniques namely as:

• Management by Objectives (MBO),
• KRA & KPIs’
• Balanced Scorecards (for all-round ownership),
• 360 degrees (relevant in a matrix environment) and
• OKR (Objectives and Key Results, for breaking larger objectives in piece meals over shorter periods of time to drive consistent progress).

While each of these methods have merits if applied effectively, which includes employee awareness and training. Measuring these has more often been post-facto, which means course correction, feedback has been applied post the review period often resulting in loss of irrecoverable time and effort.

The future of Performance Management will depend on the following theory: MICE (Measurable, Instant, Collaborative and Equitable):

• Defining goals that are measurable with factual data based on historical trends and not aspirational perceptions.
• A blend of individual and shared goals to promote collaboration and joint ownership for all-round success.
• Leadership accountability to make available the required resources for individuals to be successful and accept failure as a learning not as a medium to reprimand.
• Technology powered by statistical and analytical AI that can apply Predictive, Diagnostic and Prescriptive analytics to support in gauging not just real-time performance but also recommend the techniques and methodologies for success.
• Feedback that is “Instant” and “Informal” added with Reward and Recognition that are frequent celebrating even the micro efforts and wins. A HRB article on Performance Management Revolution supports this approach.

Employees from the new generation (special Gen Z and Gen Alpha) are blessed with opportunities galore and hence Employee Engagement is evolving from the mandatory benefit and standard wellness added with “Fun Fridays” and off-sites to being measured on scales of:

• Personal care for the individual, being supportive during their times of need.
• Offering benefits in the form of EAP, Insurance and Wellness that is not just reliable but is also acknowledged for extending additional accommodations as required.
• Flexible policies and practices that recognises and accommodates personal requirements.
• Platform where they are heard with 100% psychological safety and a leadership team that takes their voices seriously and acts upon them, with reasonability of course.
• A workplace that is inclusive and void of biases and discrimination. While many organisations claim to nurture such an environment few have measurable, auditable and reportable business processes that establishes if a workplace is inclusive.

A workplace that invests in their meeting their aspirations with investments in upskilling, learning and development in addition to roles and projects that they are desirous of.

Yes, burnouts are indeed a significant cause of stress for employees aside of equity of compensation and toxicity at workplace.

Burnouts are a result of lack of accurate workforce planning in an organisation. Manpower requirements in an organisation is assessed by gut feel or perceptions often, while this should be gauged scientifically. Manpower budgets are also not defined based on market dynamism and benchmarks or economic trends of cost of living, rather it is an innate desire of the financial planners in an organisation to define the compensation and benefits budget based on how they would like to see their bottom-line shape-up. This results in inaccurate manpower estimates, resulting in one individual ending up with a workload more than what they are capacitised to execute.

This situation becomes a vicious cycle resulting in delays, back-logs, defects resulting in the individual experiencing pressures and criticism, causing stress and burnout. Burnouts are also caused by a psychological setback when employees recognise the mismatch in pay equity when compared against external standards.

Burnouts can be addressed by Performance Management if the measures of performance are defined scientifically, applying established techniques like Lean and Time & Motion so that individuals are able to maintain a balance between work and their personal spaces, followed by a worthy reward and recognition programme that includes aspects such as special projects, up-skilling opportunities, succession-based roles and monetary rewards.

Employee engagement initiatives could be highly effective if these provide a psychologically safe space for employees to express their pain areas to leaders and if those are addressed as intended, if their voices go unheard or unactioned then no quantum of employee engagement can help reduce burnout.

Companies and HR functions today will need to plan for their workforce better applying what I would like to call I.C.E.  in all their actions and decisions where I.C.E. stands for “Inclusion, Compassion and Empathy.

A performance management strategy should be one that can be demonstrated and illustrated to employees and also solicits their participation from the design stage till implementation and post implementation to gauge it’s effectiveness on well-being and engagement. Allow me to illustrate, ask yourself these questions while creating and implementing a performance management strategy:

• Does your performance management strategy have objectives aligned with the company’s values? (Competency and behaviour-based goals)
• Are the goals and targets scientifically established based on historical performance trends, both internally and from the external marketplace. (Analytical endorsements)
• What are the skills and resources (investments) required for attainment of those goals?
• Are these investments made or in the budget? (Skills and Training Need Analysis)
• What should the goals look like if these investments are not made? (Alternate goals).
• Do you have the technology to capture, measure and report performance data instantly with trends and analytics?
• Do you have a quality control / Internal audit process to minimise any quality concerns?
• Does your performance management strategy have goals & targets broken into smaller measurable actions?
• Does your performance management strategy illustrate the associated rewards and recognitions for performance including and up to promotions, monetary increments, special projects etc. and how your employees could strive for these?
• Does your performance management strategy eliminate any form of biases?
• Have you educated your employees on this and solicited their feedback / acceptance? Has the feedback been actioned?
• Does your performance management strategy factor in special accommodation needs of employees, so that they do not miss-out?

All of these questions once addressed will help build a sustainable and holistic performance management strategy that integrates with well-being and engagement.

Employee purpose changes over time driven by conditions and circumstances, some are short-term while others are for a life-time. It is essential that a company is able to assess the purpose of their employees periodically via meaningful engagements and surveys.

These assessments should start pre-hire stages to gauge alignment with the company’s values, while that should not be a deterrent in hiring an individual, so long as a company has resources that inculcates the company’s values via actions and practices.

Thereafter during the lifecycle of the employee there should be multiple check-points both formal and informal to assess the purpose of individuals. However, the work does not conclude at just the assessments, the next step is critical which is the ability to compare how the company and HR function can nurture individuals to attain their purpose both short-term and long-term, via actions and interventions.

Some individuals may be driven by monetary purposes, another for learning and yet another for challenges and growth. A company can retain it’s talent if they are able to continuously evolve and transform to meet these short and long-term needs of individuals and that happens by continually transforming and improving, expecting to meet employee purpose and retain them by applying age-old methods, policies and practices will not create the sense of belonging especially within the Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

How would you recommend handling a situation where a high-performing employee suddenly shows a decline in performance?

This should be an “Early Warning Signal” for the company, trends should be analysed to check for events that may have caused this decline. Events could be trigged via incidents in the personal or professional life. While technology interventions that engage in assessing the daily moods of an individual could be helpful in triggering initial signals. EAP’s can be helpful in such scenarios to get cues.

However, it is essential to engage with the individual 1-on-1 to understand the causes. Remember that individuals will be transparent and vulnerable only if they feel that they are in a psychologically safe zone. If your company already promotes such an environment (which is desirable) then it should not be difficult for the individual to share details without any probing.

Remember, that while you approach the individual to understand the causes, approach with empathy, compassion and empowerment. Just a discussion without a concrete way forward will result in individuals losing faith. Be patient and probe till you have the causes, if these are personal then check on what is required, these could range from financial support to additional time-offs or a flexible work schedule etc. be empowered to arrive at decision quickly with minimal to zero negotiations. Such acts will go a long way in establishing trust and a sense of belonging.

In the event, the causes are at workplace, then it is equally important to understand and address those, since these causes may be early indicators of a larger situation brewing. Understand the causes, make inquiries to get facts, observe others and then arrive at a conclusion to address. There are times when individual’s performance declines since they have decided to move on to pursue a better opportunity, while you may be successful in retaining the individual via negotiations but this is not a sustainable approach if there are others in the pipeline. Such situations indicate that you have as a company not been able to successfully leverage the purpose and passion of employees and that you need to go back to the drawing board.

How do you create a work environment that encourages employees to take risks and innovate, knowing that failures will be addressed constructively?

An environment that celebrates ICE (inclusion, compassion and empathy) is an environment that is mature to understand that success is an outcome of multiple attempts and such an environment is one that not only encourages individuals to take risks but also celebrates failures as learning. There is a quote by Micheal Jordan (NBA star player) “I have failed over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed” and another by Winston Churchill ““Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

A company can foster such a work environment once they stop treating failures negatively rather celebrate the learning out of the failure. This is an environment that can be established if leaders ‘walk the talk’ themselves are quick in responding to anomalies and have applied tools and techniques to help salvage an indicative failure. In Project Management, every project factors in a ‘Risk Register’, this captures the risks that a project may go through, it is the responsibility of the project manager to highlight these with pre-emptive measures to the extent possible. Similarly, leaders need to be aware of the risks (both controllable and uncontrollable) in their spaces and work towards pre-empting what can be pre-empted and monitor for indicative anomalies for the rest and resort to a Plan B if required.

An environment that breathes such practices is indeed one that addresses failures constructively. They use the learning to improvise, transform and finally evolve towards perfection. Remember even Six Sigma accepts 3.4 defects in a million. So, if you have failures also have robust practices that can embrace the failure and adopt them into designing reliable practices.