The attraction of a clean record is easy to understand. It is simple to count, easy to compare and reassuring to present. A manager can point to a period without an absence, a complaint or a reported problem and suggest that the team is working well. Sometimes that interpretation is justified. Sometimes the record describes a different achievement: people have learned which information makes life more difficult for them or their manager. The number remains accurate while the conclusion drawn from it becomes unreliable.
I learned this through a reward design I supported. In 2014, at the fictional Anvethra Pharmaceuticals, we introduced a supervisor award that placed substantial weight on uninterrupted attendance within the team. We intended to recognise dependable staffing. The criterion seemed clear and administratively defensible. Employee discussions later showed that some colleagues delayed reporting illness because they did not want to weaken the supervisor’s result. Our measure had created pressure that was inconsistent with the openness we expected about fitness for work.
The measure carries an instruction
My first instinct was to improve the explanation. We could say more clearly that the company did not want anyone to withhold a relevant concern. That response was insufficient because the incentive itself still attached value to an uninterrupted record. An employee listening to the explanation could also see the consequence of reporting. The company was asking the person to believe the reassuring words while ignoring the mechanism through which the award was decided. Better communication could not resolve that contradiction on its own.
This is a useful distinction when reviewing any incentive. The stated intention describes what the designer hopes to encourage. The rule describes what a participant has reason to do. Those may align in ordinary circumstances and diverge in a difficult week. A supervisor under pressure can interpret a measure more narrowly than the designer intended. An employee may protect a colleague or manager rather than act solely for personal reward. Understanding that behaviour requires listening to people in the working relationship, not only analysing the formula.
In our case, occupational-health colleagues helped us understand why the concern could not be treated as a matter of messaging alone. I did not attempt to evaluate individual health circumstances as part of the reward review. Those belonged with appropriately qualified professionals and confidential processes. My responsibility was to examine the employment incentive and recommend a change. We withdrew the attendance criterion rather than try to preserve it through an increasingly complicated set of verbal qualifications.
Operations leaders had a legitimate concern about credibility. They had introduced the scheme in good faith and now had to explain why it was changing. A reversal can make managers reluctant to support the next initiative. I thought the greater risk was asking them to defend a criterion we no longer believed was sound. We explained the problem as a design responsibility, including the people function’s role, rather than suggesting that employees had misunderstood an otherwise excellent programme. Owning the error made the correction more honest.
Correction has to reach the earlier decisions
Removing a rule for the future does not settle what happened under it. We reviewed forty-one award decisions from the affected period and changed thirteen. Correction payments and review costs totalled ₹19 lakh. Finance asked how the retrospective scope would be bounded, and that question needed an answer. We defined the affected period and decisions, documented the basis for reconsideration and avoided turning the exercise into an open-ended review of unrelated employment matters. A correction should be specific enough to administer fairly.
The company also had to protect individual information. Explaining why an award criterion was withdrawn did not require publishing anyone’s health history or identifying who had raised a concern. Managers needed a consistent account of the design issue and the review process. Employees needed to know how an affected decision would be reconsidered. Those are different communication needs from satisfying a general curiosity about individual circumstances. A public leadership story should preserve that same restraint when describing the experience afterwards.
I would not claim that the correction produced a measurable improvement in health from the evidence available. Nor would I use a rise or fall in reports as a convenient proof of success. Reporting can change for many reasons, including greater confidence in the process. The result I can describe is narrower: the unwanted criterion was removed, the identified decisions were reviewed and thirteen were changed. That account may sound less impressive than a broad cultural claim, but it is better supported by the work actually done.
The experience also altered how I view a clean dashboard. A low count may be encouraging, but management should understand how information reaches the count and what might discourage it. This does not mean assuming that every positive result conceals a problem. It means treating a surprising absence of difficult information as a question worth examining. A company that asks employees to speak openly should consider whether its appraisal and reward arrangements make that openness personally costly.
A difficult-week test before launch
We subsequently added an earlier discussion with people close to the work when designing a people incentive. I ask them to imagine a week in which two reasonable obligations conflict. What would the proposed measure reward? What information would they hesitate to share? Which decision would look worse in the report even if it were appropriate in context? These questions can expose consequences that remain invisible in a presentation built around average conditions. They also help distinguish a problem in the measure from a problem in the resources available.
The exercise is not a substitute for clear standards. Without a defined expectation, reward can become arbitrary and managers may apply inconsistent judgements. The task is to define a standard that remains defensible when circumstances become difficult, and to specify where judgement is required. Some results should prompt inquiry before they determine an award. The responsible manager should be able to explain that inquiry, including why apparently similar numbers may arise from different situations. Consistency is more demanding than treating every number as self-explanatory.
There should also be an agreed point for reviewing a new scheme after people have used it. The review needs more than a satisfaction question or a calculation of how many awards were paid. It should examine the decisions participants made, the exceptions raised and any behaviour that surprised the designers. If the evidence suggests a problem, management should be willing to revise the arrangement before its continuation becomes a matter of institutional pride. A programme can have been introduced carefully and still need correction.
For a CHRO, the most uncomfortable part may be acknowledging that the people function helped create the pressure. I consider that acknowledgement necessary. Advising others on culture while defending our own flawed measure would weaken the contribution we can make. The useful outcome of the 2014 experience was not a story about discovering misconduct elsewhere. It was a more disciplined way to question our own proposals. Before celebrating a clean record, I now want to understand whether the record reflects dependable work, or an employment arrangement that has made inconvenient information harder to share.