Case study- Performance management system at Bharti Airtel






Introduction-
                           Bharti Airtel Limited was one of the world's fastest growing telecom companies
That carved for itself a leadership position in the global telecommunications sector. In October
2007, it achieved the distinction of becoming the fastest private telecom company in the world to reach the landmark of 50million customers in a single country, within a short period of 143 months of start of operations. It was India’s leading private sector provider of telecommunications services, covering a wide spectrum comprising mobile, fixed line, broadband and enterprise services. As of December 2007 it was India's largest integrated private telecom service provider with 55.16 million mobile subscribers constituting a market share of 24.09% of the entire mobile telephone industry.

Bharti Airtel was the first telecom company to have an All-India footprint by covering all the 23 telecom circles of India.
It was one of the five largest companies in India in terms of the market capitalization and the flagship organization of Bharti Enterprises, one of India’s leading business groups with diverse interests such as telecom, agro products, insurance and retail. Its brand 'Beetel' was the country’s largest manufacturer and exporter of world class telecom terminals.




Case Analysis


Strengths
                With the key result areas that are used for measuring individual Performance, managers are able to focus their efforts and energies in the right direction and be rewarded for the same. The appraisal is based more on facts than on value judgments or intuitions and gives appraise full opportunity to discuss his point of view. Every employee giving in writing their goals for the next financial year is extremely beneficial since it ensures transparency in the process and builds up the manager’s trust and confidence in the system, thereby increasing his motivation and commitment towards work. A set of Performance factors that are used to evaluate employee’s help in converging the objectives of the individual and the company and helps organization in reaching a position of excellence and sustained growth
Problems
                  The Performance appraisal form of each employee passes through a number of heads and needs to be signed and rechecked by a number of VP‘s, which may create lot of confusion and waste large amount of time. The appraisal comprises of lot of comments and remarks by various heads and VP’s rather than simple grading on the basis of points, which is not so practical and convenient in evaluating. The appraisal system is done yearly and not quarterly. Rewards based on appraisal system are given only occasionally which hampers the motivation of the employees. Employees don’t get feedbacks properly as a result they can’t work properly on it.

I have recommended the following:
                                                            Broader HRD base: One other thing to be noted is that there is only one HRD office for the whole organization, which is not sufficient enough. The company should have a few more of these department controls set up to make it reachable to every employee of the organization.
The appraisal system should be done on half yearly basis that is at least one appraisal system in every 6 months. This helps the employees to keep a track of their own performance also.
The rewards based on appraisal system should be given often and regularly; this gives motivation to the employees. The rewards should be given either in monetary basis or reward basis.
Appraisal should be done by the very next boss (e.g., Sales manager should appraise the business executive who are working under them only). If the VP’s do the appraisal system in many cases it is found that they are not fully aware of the person’s performance.