iCount appraisal system and its benefits

The iCount is the new performance appraisal system that focuses on the contribution of the
individual employees and continuous feedback. Infosys has scraped off the bell curve based CRR
rating system to bring the new system in place. Considering the employee size of the
organization it was considered to be a revolutionary change under the leadership of Vishal Sikka,
CEO of the company. The idea was to retain the high performance culture with more focus on
the more collaborative and developmental goal for the company as well as for the individual
employees. Going forward Infosys would disproportionately reward its top performing
employees, out its employee strength which is just shy of 2 lakh.
The salient features of the new appraisal system are as following:
Setting the goals and the targets with the manager on mutual agreement
Targets are based on given task
Feedback and rating of each task is provided soon after every task is completed
Final rating given annually based on the overall task performance throughout the year
This final rating is further reviewed by the higher management
Infosys has inbuilt iCount application to run and monitor the new the appraisal system. The
process of the appraisal system starts when an employee is assigned a task. The manager and the
employee together comes up with the expected result out of each task on the basis of mutual
agreement. The task and earlier set goals could be revisited by the employee or the manager if
there are any unexpected changes in the project. At the end of each task the manager would
provide feedback to the employee on his performance on the task. The rating for each of the task
would also be given during the feedback session. On completion of one task another task is set in
the iCount application and this process feedback and rating is continued till the end of one year.
During the annual appraisal the employee is given the final rating on the basis of his performance
throughout the year.
The ratings provided to the employee are in the form of Outstanding, commendable, and met
expectation , below expectation instead of a number assigned to them in case of CRR rating
system. This would reduce the negative emotional aspect of an employee associated to a number
though out his tenure in Infosys. This rating would be used for the allocation of bonuses, variable
pay and promotion of the employee.
In the iCount appraisal system the employee would be rated based only on his/her individual
performance and manager do not have force fit any particular percentage of employees into any
particular ratings. This would motivate the employee to focus more on the parameters set during
the initiation of task in iCount. In ideal case in the new system every employee can score an
outstanding rating if he/she excels in the task assigned to them.
The iCount appraisal system also brings transparency in the whole process. The employee can
always track where he is positioned. All the feedback and the rating of the individual tasks could
always be seen in the iCount application, so there is always an opportunity for the employee to
evaluate himself and predict what could be his potential rating. From another view point this
would reduce the favoritism by the mangers if any in the system. Managers could not favor an
employee if his rating are bad over a high performing employee since continuous feedbacks of
all the employees could be obtained from the iCount application. The iCount system also takes
care of the situations like the transfer of the employee. Since there are records of the previous
tasks undertaken the new manager can always refer to the iCount application and give rating to
the employee in the annual appraisal meeting.
One of the main advantage of the new system is its focus on continuous feedback. Thus the
employees will be informed of their weakness and strengths and, the areas to improve upon on a
continuous basis. This will provide the employees ample time to make up for the past failures in
the next tasks and improve their rating hence improving the productivity of the company.
The new system would be able reduce the grievances related to the appraisal, bonus and
promotion. This is assumed so because of the increased transparency, feedback, participatory
model of goal setting and provision for the employee to improve upon his rating.
Even though the iCount system boasts lots of advantages and improvements, but only time will
tell the real benefits and shortcomings of the system.