The trend is shifting to ‘Agile performance management’ which is collaborative, involves regular conversations and continuous feedback.

With the aim to attract, retain and reward the right talent, most companies in India have to strive harder, especially when the financial year ends. A phase of critical introspection of yearly performance and its people. Management and employees go through the much-awaited appraisal discussions that eventually result in salary increments promotions, new hiring projections, and even layoffs.

Research shows that ‘Annual’ appraisal cycles are more of power & control mechanisms for organizations and largely ineffective when it comes to timely gratification of a good job done and bias due to recent events. The trend is shifting to ‘Agile performance management’ which is collaborative, involves regular conversations and continuous feedback.

Yet, over 70% of Multinational organizations in India still follow an Annual appraisal system and 'March' happens to be the month of announcements. It's also the season with an upsurge in hiring activities. While most companies align their increment budgets to financial year closing in March, there are others that follow Dec as budget year-end. As per the AON survey, India Inc. will give 9.1% average increments this year. It’s the lowest in 20 years.

The world is seeing an unprecedented Pandemic with Covid19 which is severely impacting businesses, jobs, hiring plans and even the working styles. As it requires Social distancing & constant hygienic measures, the worst affected sectors in India are Hospitality, Tourism, transportation including Aviation & ride-hailing, the Real estate which employs over 100 million employees and 10 million flex-workers.

Anticipating Corona to be a temporary phase, not lasting beyond another quarter, the Job opportunities are set to increase in many sectors, this fiscal despite the relative slowdown in the economy. The increments and hiring pack is led by IT Services, Technology startups, BPO, education and e-commerce sectors. Sectors with lower increments include Automobiles, Telecom, Infrastructure, logistics and hospitality, among others.

As a trend, companies are also witnessing a 10% to 15% increase in the number of internal hiring through promotions, transfers & lateral movements. Hyper-performers are retained, upskilled and get the biggest pie of increments.

45% of HR leaders think annual performance reviews reflect in-accurate appraisals of the employee's work. In the coming years, the annual spike in job search led by yearly appraisals is likely to become flat. It’s because 70% of multinational companies are likely to move on a regular appraisal model. Workers, especially Millennials, expect instant gratification for a good job done.

Thus, it can be said that the future jobs will have the majority of the staff to be gig workers and remote workers, creating agile ways of engaging, coaching and retaining talent.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors' and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house