Think about it. Employees work on projects that change every few months, yet their performance is often assessed once a year. Organisations encourage experimentation, yet reward employees primarily for meeting predetermined targets. Technology promises increasingly personalised employee experiences, yet the human connection that makes workplaces meaningful can sometimes get lost in the pursuit of efficiency.
The disconnect is becoming difficult to ignore. While employee expectations have evolved towards greater flexibility, transparency, purpose and meaningful feedback, many HR practices continue to operate on assumptions that made sense in a different workplace.
So which HR practice needs the most urgent rethink? Is it the annual appraisal, the way organisations define and reward performance, or something more fundamental about how they treat people?
Avishek Roy, Director – HR, Perfetti Van Melle
Human connection is the one thing HR transformation must not leave behind.
As technology and AI become more embedded in the workplace, the more important question is what should remain unchanged, regardless of how sophisticated HR processes become. The answer is human trust, connection and empathy.
Employees are human beings, and emotions are fundamental to how they experience work. The pandemic demonstrated the importance of human relationships. Even as technology enables greater efficiency, people continue to seek meaningful human interaction. At a time when trust in institutions and leadership is increasingly being questioned, creating genuinely supportive environments becomes more important, not less.
Organisations also carry responsibilities that extend beyond generating returns. They operate within communities, significantly affect employees’ lives and help shape the societies in which they function. At Perfetti Van Melle, we support schools around our plant locations. Seeing children from disadvantaged backgrounds benefit from better educational facilities and scholarships reinforces the belief that an organisation’s impact extends well beyond its immediate business outcomes.
The same principle applies internally. Employees spend eight to ten hours of their waking day at work. Organisations have a responsibility to ensure those hours are worthwhile. HR processes should therefore be designed around the people they serve, rather than treating employees simply as participants in an increasingly automated system.
Whether redesigning performance management, introducing new technologies or adopting AI, efficiency cannot be the only measure of progress. Trust, empathy and genuine care for people must remain central.
Takeaway: HR transformation cannot be measured through efficiency alone. Processes must preserve human connection, strengthen trust and reflect an organisation’s responsibility towards its people.
Suryameet Roy, President – HR and Administration, JM Baxi Group
Performance reviews, because every other HR process inherits their flaws.
If there is one HR practice most overdue for a rethink, it is performance reviews. Employee expectations have moved much faster than core HR processes, and performance management remains one of the clearest examples of this disconnect.
The problem is not simply that reviews happen annually. Feedback often arrives too late to make a meaningful difference. By the time employees learn what they could have done differently, the opportunity to improve may already have passed. Traditional reviews also assume relatively static roles, whereas today’s work increasingly involves shifting responsibilities, cross-functional projects and evolving priorities.
More importantly, the consequences extend beyond appraisals. Performance ratings influence compensation, promotions and retention decisions. When the underlying assessment is flawed, those distortions travel across the employee experience.
Meaningful change requires separating ongoing developmental feedback from formal compensation decisions. Reviews should reflect project milestones rather than being dictated entirely by the financial calendar. Performance expectations must be established before the assessment period begins, not retrospectively. Managers also need sufficient time for meaningful conversations instead of being overwhelmed by administrative requirements.
Some may argue that rewards or career progression deserve greater urgency. That is a fair debate. But unless organisations improve how performance is defined, assessed and discussed, subsequent HR decisions risk inheriting the same weaknesses.
Takeaway: Performance management underpins several critical people decisions. Improving its timing, relevance and fairness can strengthen everything from rewards to career progression.
Jaya Suri, Chief Human Resources Officer, Kimbal
Performance management needs to enable performance, not just measure it.
The biggest question surrounding performance management is not simply whether to evaluate results or effort. It is whether our systems encourage the behaviours organisations actually want.
When employees know their ratings depend primarily on meeting targets, they may avoid ambitious goals. Instead of experimenting, they may choose safer commitments that are more likely to guarantee favourable evaluations. But evaluating effort and behaviour presents another challenge: subjectivity. Two employees making similar contributions could receive different ratings because their managers interpret those efforts differently.
Performance management therefore needs three critical alignments: individual goals that connect meaningfully with organisational objectives, alignment between individual purpose and organisational purpose, and a clear distinction between committed goals and stretch goals.
On the first, employees should understand not just what they are expected to achieve, but how their contributions move the business forward. On the second, when employees’ aspirations and strengths connect with organisational goals, ownership becomes more meaningful, and that requires trust and open conversations, not merely appraisal forms. On the third, employees should remain accountable for their commitments while feeling encouraged to experiment and pursue ambitious outcomes. Missing a stretch goal should not automatically translate into poor performance. There is a meaningful difference between a lack of commitment and a genuine attempt to achieve something extraordinary.
Performance management should not simply tell employees how they performed. It should create the conditions that help them perform better.
Takeaway: The real shift is from evaluating past achievements to enabling future performance. Organisations must reward accountability without discouraging ambition, experimentation and growth.