Darting Performances, Ignoring Values

Businesses managed by owners/promoters carry values and systems that are in fact endorsed and practiced by the promoters themselves. Therefore, a lot of HR functions get decided through intuition, ignoring aspects that the functions actually warrant. This, apart from creating a confusion of sorts for the HR manager, also makes room to brew a feeling of ill will and resentment among the employees.

- Dr. Anamika Sinha And Narayan Arunachalam

Darious Pvt. Ltd. is a marketing firm that provides business related information through an online platform and assists organizations with integrated workflow solutions. Operating from its head office in India, it catered to clients located in the UK and the US.

Established in 2010 by Tapan Majumdar, a businessman, the initial service preposition of the firm was to provide reliable, consistent, and objective credit information. By the end of 2016, the company, by way of leveraging the available technology, boasted of a wide range of services that it could make available. The services range offered were, providing leads, data on more than 40,000 companies, in more than 200 industries. The diversity of industries being catered to, and, the uniqueness of the clients made the business very dynamic, and, warranted the concerned teams to be constantly on their toes. The business was impacted by the VUCA- ness of the clients' business decisions, as well as the changes in the industry. The firm also built business insights and leads on the basis of raw data and data analysis that helped its clients to synergize their operations and accelerate sales. Being a niche service provider, the company employed Management graduates with experience and focus on data mining, analysis and interpretation skills. The employees were expected to link the data generated into meaningful reports for the clients. The total employee strength was about 400 people across all management levels.

Being a promoter driven company, the culture in the organization was informal with very little defined processes; particularly people related processes. In 2015, the company hired a Human Resource Manager who started putting systems and processes to ensure standard people practices across the organization. The intervention included the setting up of a formal performance appraisal and management process.