Hubtown (A): Designing a Bottom-Up Approach to Performance Management (A)

In 2014, Hubtown Limited (Hubtown), an Indian real estate development company, was attempting to implement a process to differentiate between its employees in order to enhance performance, identify employees who could be groomed for future growth, and distribute rewards. Hubtown was consolidating to concentrate on a few large, complex projects in residential and commercial spaces in urban centres. Like other companies in the industry, it competed for talent and faced challenges when attempting to retain, reward, and promote valuable employees.<br><br>Earlier efforts to implement a results-based performance management system had failed, so the organization decided to design and adopt a behaviour-based approach and to implement it from the bottom up to bypass resistance from senior management. Case A describes the challenges the human resources head faced in creating an institutionalized performance culture and designing the implementation plan for this system. Case B describes the implementation process and presents the initiatives taken by the human resources team to implement the process, train the stakeholders, and address challenges along the way.

These cases highlight the challenges of institutionalizing a performance management process in a family business. They can be used in a graduate class on human resource management and performance management. They can also be used in an entrepreneurship course as an example of professionalization in a family-run business.<br><br>After working through the cases and discussing the assignment questions, students will be able to do the following:<ul><li>Explain the challenges of creating a performance-oriented culture, especially in an industry with comparatively low levels of professionalization.</li><li>Explain the challenges of adopting a bottom-up approach to usher in an institutionalized performance culture.</li><li>Compare and contrast a results-based approach and a behaviour-based approach to performance management.</li><li>Outline the challenges of designing and implementing an appropriate performance management process.</li></ul>

• Performance management , behavioral approach , professionalization , training