Performance Management

and
Reward System
of
Cognizant Technology Solution

Submitted to:
Dr. Rachana Chattopadhyay
Associate Professor
International Management Institute Kolkata

Submitted by: Arpita Basu

Enrollment no. 17PGDM085

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary ..................................................................................................................................................... 1
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................. 2
Objective……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….3

Performance Management………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..6-8

Reward Management System……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….9

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...10

References……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………11

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
“Forward-thinking businesses can't just do digital. They
must be digital at their very core.”
— Francisco D’Souza, Chief Executive Officer

Cognizant is an American multinational corporation

that provides IT services, including digital,
technology, consulting, and operations services. It is
headquartered in New Jersey, United States. It is
also one of the fastest growing Fortune 500
companies.
Cognizant is one of the world's leading professional
services companies, transforming clients' business,
operating and technology models for the digital era.
Our unique industry-based, consultative approach
helps clients envision, build and run more innovative
and efficient businesses. Headquartered in the U.S.,
Cognizant, a member of the Nasdaq-100, is ranked
195 on the Fortune 500 and is consistently listed
among the most admired companies in the world.

The performance management system (PMS) at Cognizant links directly to rewards, recognition, and
career development .The PMS at Cognizant follows the basic steps of PMS from planning to coaching
and feedback. Currently Quarterly bases performance evaluation has been going on, which has high
motivational level, and high quality. There should be a system of consultation between employees and
management about employees’ career path, it is easier for management to understand
and analyze what employees want and allocate them reward accordingly. Cognizant is well aware of fact
that higher management love to have non monitory rewards
i.e. Achievement Feelings of accomplishment, Informal recognition, Personal growth,Status, while lower
management are more likely to have rewards like incentives, bonuses i.e. have more curiosity to take
cash rewards. Maslow’s theory can be best define social, self esteem and self actualization stage
employees have inquisitiveness to take intrinsic rewards while other ones physiological, safety needs
employees are more attracted by cash rewards of any kind. Along with KRA, KPI should be set for
managing performance to ensure transparency in the system.

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 Organization Structure- Cognizant
Technology Solution
INTRODUCTION
Chief Executive Officer
The company has more than 261,400 employees globally,
of which over 150,000 are in India across 10 locations with
a plurality in Chennai. The other centers of the company EVP
are in Bangalore, Coimbatore, Gurgaon, Noida, Hyderabad,
Kochi, Kolkata, Mangalore, Mumbai, and Pune.
SVP
Cognizant is organized into several verticals and horizontal
units. The vertical units focus on specific industries such as
Banking & Financial Services, Insurance, Healthcare, VP
Manufacturing and Retail. The horizontals focus on specific
technologies or process areas such as Analytics, mobile
computing, BPO and Testing. Both horizontal and vertical AVP
units have business consultants, who together form the
organization-wide Cognizant Consulting team. Cognizant is
among the largest recruiters of MBAs in the industry; they Senior Director
are involved in business development and business analysis
for IT services projects.
Director

Associate Director

Senior Manager

Manager

Senior Associate

Associate

Programmer Analyst

Programmer Trainee

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OBJECTIVES

Data relating to performance assessment of employees are recorded, stored and used for the below
mentioned purposes.
1. To effect promotions based on competencies and performance
2. To confirm the services of probationary employees upon their completing the probationary period
satisfactorily
3. To assess the training and development needs of employees
4. To decide upon a pay raise
5. To let the employees know where they stand in so far as their performance is concerned and to assist
them with constructive criticism and guidance for the purpose of their development
6. To improve communication, performance appraisal provides a format for dialogue between the
superior and the subordinate, and improves understanding of personal goals and concerns. This can also
have the effect of increasing the trust between the rater and the rate
7. Finally, performance appraisal can be used to determine whether HR programmes such a selection,
training, and transfers have been effective or not.

Broadly, performance appraisal serves four objectives-

(i) Developmental uses,
a. Identification of individual needs
b. Performance feedback
c. Determining transfers and job assignments
d. Identification of individual strengths and development needs
(ii) Administrative uses/decisions,
a. Salary
b. Promotion
c. Retention or termination
d. Recognition of individual performance
e. Lay-offs
f. Identification of poor performers
(iii) Organizational maintenance/objectives, and
a. HR planning
b. Determining organization training needs
c. Evaluation of organizational goal achievement
d. Information for goal identification
e. Evaluation of HR systems
f. Reinforcement of organizational development needs
(iv) Documentation purposes
a. Criteria for validation research
b. Documentation for HR decisions
c. Helping to meet legal requirements

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PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
Mission of the Company

Organizational Goals

Key Result Areas

Performance Objectives
According to my practical analysis, I came to know that Cognizant Technology Solution is using better
linkage of mission and vision to its organizations functions as well. As above diagram clearly explain how
they managed all in a way to get best appropriate results. As they have developed a
system to involve employees in decision making just to make them company loyal and responsible. First
goals are developed at higher level, then head of departments make their ones, and at the end
employees also formulate their goals. Supervisor, manager or respective authority review the individual
goals and make changes if required.

Some examples of KRAs for Manager in Cognizant:

 Project Delivery and budget forecasting:
• Define project scope, goals and deliverables that support business goals in collaboration with
senior management and stakeholders
• Develop comprehensive project plans that cover all project related areas such as scope
management, time management, risk management, quality management
• Develop and manage a project budget that is approved by key stakeholders
• Manage and control the project in line with project and budget plans developed
 Communication and reporting:
 Provide project progress and forecast reports
 Effective and efficient resource allocation
 Estimate the resources and participants needed to achieve project goals and track resource
hours expended on the project
 Lead and manage a high performance team
 Coach, mentor, motivate and supervise project team members and influence them to take
positive action and accountability for their assigned work

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  Facilitates regular team meetings to discuss issues, share knowledge, share achievements,
provide training and direction
 Identifies training and development needs and provides the resources needed to develop
team members
Performance Management and Reward System in Cognizant is divided into two parts.
First part is Performance Evaluation that runs From January 1st till 31st December.
Performance Evaluation:
 If an employee is for appraisal cycle in the current year, which if that employee has joined on or
before 31st December. There used to be documents called YEA (Year End Appraisal) Document and
Goal Setting Document in past, now cognizant having a portal named “Go perform”.
 Cognizant do the performance evaluation quarterly
 MBO technique is being used because the supervisor and subordinates of a project jointly define
their common goals of the project and define each individual major area of responsibilities or
individual’s major areas of responsibilities or individual goals in terms of cost, quality, time,
productivity, and delivery.
 Departmental goals is developed by the Senior Manager and Director of the project, then that is
communicated with the employees and ask them to develop their individual goals and accordingly
short term performance targets or standards through which organizational goals can be achieved
and update the goals in the “Go Perform” portal, after that managers will login to the portal and will
review the targets and will make changes if required.
 At the end of each quarter employees will update their deliverables in the portal, also managers or
reporting authority will check, and validate the information provided by the employees through the
mails from the client i.e. appreciation mails from the client after a successful delivery.
 The employee’s goals and achievements will be evaluated quarterly. This helps the employees to
make sure that they are in the right track.
 First, employee will evaluate themselves on the basis of goals set and achieve by them quarterly.
Then document will be submitted for Supervisor evaluation quarterly.
 Supervisor will evaluate and put his comments and ratings quarterly, will give no. between 1-5 to
each deliverables and final grades will be based on average of the quarters. But this step is not this
simple.
 This evaluation includes factors like available buckets of rating, Managers consent, and Bell curve
 The managers, supervisors or the reporting authority will provide feedback to each employee based
on their final rating scores, and the process will not be over until the entire conversation between
the rater and ratee is over
 Rating Normalization
 In End of Nov or early Dec, final evaluation will take place which is nothing but the average
quarterly evaluation.
 All this takes around month and half, and ratings would be announced by mid of Feb of the next
year.
All the employees are rated on below 4 scales,

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Exceeds All (EA) - top rating. This is the top rating which can be given around 5-10 % employees.
Exceeds Most (EM) - Second Top (average rating, this is what most people get). This is second best
rating which gave to around 40-50 % employees.
Meets All (MA) - This is called “third rating”, I put this in quotes because it makes you like a third world
human being. This is third rating which gave to around 30-40 %employees.
Meets Some (MS) - This is a rare rating, and could be leading you to termination. This is the worst rating
which gave to 5-10 % employees. Number of EA and MS must be same for any project. In case of MS,
Cognizant can issue pink slip for employee.
Now, first step is over.

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REWARD MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Reward management is concerned with the formulation and implementation of strategies
and policies the purposes of which are to reward people fairly, equitably and consistently inaccordance
with their value to the organization and to help the organization to achieve its strategic goals. It deals
with the design, implementation and maintenance of reward systems
(reward processes, practices and procedures) which aim to meet the needs of both the organization and
its stakeholders. Reward refers to all forms of financial returns and tangible services and benefit
employees receive as a part of an employment relationship.
Cognizant’s rewarding system to employee is excellent as they are caring with excellent rewarding
parameters just to retain, motivate and influence employees towards organizational
goals with their best potential utilization. They are rewarding relating with employees performance in a
way to increase productivity and effectiveness. They take holistic view of all the elements to reward
and recognize employees to ensure a complete, comprehensive package of pay, benefits and learning
and development programs. They are using in directly different motivational aspects like Maslow’s
hierarchy of needs, and two factor theory of HerzBerg. But more importantly they are not specifically
using one of them; they just relate their main concepts with their reward system to define it properly.
Second part is Salary revision or Promotions or both. This happens in June-July, but effective from 1st
July always.
On the basis of ratings, hikes and promotions are announced in the month of July. Both your yearly
increment and bonus will depend on the rating and every year the management decides how much
bonus to pay to each category based on the profit and revenues of the organization.
These rules are no mandate, but the below mentioned patterns has been seen-
An amount will be deducted from the CTC at the beginning of the year as variable pay, i.e. in case of the
designation Programmer Analyst Trainee Rs. 10000 will be deducted, Programmer Analyst it is Rs.
20000, for Associate designation it is Rs. 45000 and for the Senior Associate designation the amount is
Rs. 70000
• Those who are getting EA rating will get 130-140% of bonus ( 130%/140% of the above mentioned
variable Pay) and a salary increment of 8-10% on the fixed pay
• Those who are getting EM rating will get 110-120% of bonus and a salary hike of 6-8%
• Those who are getting MA rating will get 80-100% of bonus and a salary hike of 4-6%
• And MS rating holders will either get 50% of bonus or none and a salary hike of approx. 2%
• Promotions/Salary Hikes are generally effective from July for up to managers however in case of
Senior Manager to SVP designation it will be effective from October
• Suppose an employee is getting one EA and one EM, then almost it is sure that employee will get a
promotion in the second year.
• Both EAs will surely have higher chances, but again it has been seen people not getting promoted
with this ratings also.
• MA or MS will surely not make you eligible for promotion

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CONCLUSION:

• Previously in YEA process, there was no such defined timeline and HR department had to send n
number of follow up email to Employees and Managers for completing the rating process but with
this quarterly check in concept timelines are now days strict and HR department ensures the rating
publish on time
• With this GoPerform platform everything is traceable and measurable in terms of deliverables. So
employee does not have to look back their sent emails in order to proof during their evaluation
period because Manager verifies the details and ensure data correctness
• Current system is intelligent enough to calculate their performance and suggest a recommended
rating for an employee. This helps management to take decision
• Current process ensures Manager and Employees are both agreed on this given Rating. Without it
rating process cannot be closed and employee can escalate to HR department for rating justification.
There are scenarios HR validates all the deliverables and data points. Hence final rating of employee
got changed as well
• With this process, Cognizant ensures employees are getting their rating based on the performance.
And any violation to this policy will be considered as disciplinary actions

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REFERENCES:

• Company: Cognizant Technology Solutions

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