Doing Business in India For Dummies®

Understanding Staffing Specifics in India

In addition to the sweeping topics of building and retaining an Indian team, there are also several smaller concerns with which you need to secure and make the most of your staff. You need to understand Indians culturally, socially, and personally. If you know what makes them tick, what values they live by, and what motivates them, you can better understand your employees and connect with them.

In this section, I offer a few staffing notes, so you can understand how to develop your team and make your employees into global Indians.

India’s performance fixation

Performance evaluations and affirmations of exceptional performance are very important to Indians. Most Indians are used to assessment programs in which performance is thoroughly dissected, analyzed, and graded.

As a Westerner, you may be inclined to play things down when evaluating an Indian employee’s performance, giving an outstanding employee, say, a 2 on a scale of 1 to 5 (where 1 is the top score). But that may demotivate your Indian employees, and as a result, they may worry about how their prestige is diminished in the eyes of their colleagues, friends, and family. Put simply, they take it hard. They may even try to argue the score or grading system with you.

When evaluating the performance of your employees, if particular team members have performed on an extremely high level, tell them that and rate them high. These ratings earn you a perennially hard worker. Performance ...