Subject: Performance Appraisals & Objective Setting
From: “People Communication”
Date: Mon, April 6, 2009 5:42 pm

Dear Colleagues,

March/April is time for reviewing employees’ performance for last year as well as setting objectives/targets for the coming year. This time it was decided to first complete the Annual Operating Plan (AOP) for 2009-2010 and then take up this exercise. With the AOP behind us, the Performance Management Process (PMP) now takes top priority. At this stage we would like to share with our people the company’s perspective on Rewards and Increases this year.

It is important for our people to know that we as a company set our standards and benchmark ourselves not only with Media but also non-Media organisations - with Media organisations in the context of industry profitability and with non-Media organisations, because of our commitment to make HTML an employer of choice.

In the last few years we did well on profits and we have shared the bottom line improvements with our people. Of late the challenges of the economic downturn have shaken most companies. The only silver lining of such times is that they bring to the fore truly solid organisations, and they re-define the industry leadership order. We at HTML should take pride in the fact that we continue to do well in these tough time, in fact if all goes well the next few years could see us actually delivering our best ever performance. Our outlook on employees is therefore very different from other organisations who see no option but to cut remuneration to survive these trying times.

However these are most certainly very uncertain times and prudent management requires us to navigate through them cautiously. Therefore at this stage we have take the following decisions: No salary changes will be made at this point in time. Performance of all employees will be evaluated for last year as per our
PMP (appraisal process). All eligible employees will receive the variable part of their compensation - the Performance Bonus, basis their own performance rating in the context of the overall company’s performance.

If we consistently exceed our targeted performance during the coming year, rewards for the same will be considered during the year. At that time the
employee performance for last year as well as current year will be considered. This therefore necessitates that individual employee objectives be clearly set for the coming year.

HTML has a stated philosophy – Recognition & Reward for High Performance. People who outperform get suitably rewarded and this year will be no different. Rewards in the form of promotions and enhanced responsibilities will be as usual and on the basis of the PMP evaluations.

The quarterly Enterprise Goal Award this year has been linked to the Base AOP for HTML – 50% for Revenue and 50% for EBITDA for all employees. We are commissioning an exercise to study and restructure some of the salaries at some levels of employees, to improve liquidity for them, without any change in their Cost to Company (CTC). The task is cut out for all of us. In the next fortnight, the PMP process takes high priority. Rating of employees’ performance and Objective setting, both, needs to be completed. As the AOP for next year is now frozen, it enables precise target setting. Similarly, the results of last year are clear, and that enables accurate evaluation of performance and rewards. Last but not the least, let’s all resolve to deliver our next Operating Plan and take the organization to a new high in every competitive context.

Please feel free to approach your HR representatives or functional heads to initiate the PMP process.

Regards,
Sharad Saxena