How are KPIs & scorecards for CHROs evolving?

HR leaders are undergoing a significant evolution.

In this context, reached out to HR leaders to understand how the CHROs’ KPIs and weightages have evolved over time, the goals they find challenging to meet, and what metrics should be tracked going forward.

KRIs & weightages

Adarsh Mishra, CHRO and Director – External Affairs & Sustainability, Panasonic Life Solutions India, says the CHRO’s role has evolved from managing the HR functions to driving business performance through human capital. “Earlier, KPIs were largely uniform and focused on hiring, attrition and efficiency. Today, guided by the principle of Think Global, Act Local, the role has shifted towards building a globally aligned yet locally relevant workforce. While global frameworks remain consistent, KPIs are increasingly calibrated to local market realities, recognising differences in talent availability, productivity, engagement and regulatory environments,” he points out.

“Currently, the CHRO’s evaluation places greater weight on business and financial impact, with KPIs linked to sales productivity, revenue per employee, frontline performance, workforce cost optimisation, HCROI (Human Capital Return on Investment) and margin impact, alongside leadership diversity, culture health and safety. One of the most challenging goals is driving sustained mindset and behaviour change, building ownership, agility and leadership readiness across the organisation, which requires long-term commitment beyond short-term metrics,” Mishra says.

Sajid Iqbal, CHRO and Senior Vice President – HR, Brigade Group, shares that the most important metrics in his KPI are linked to business. The following metrics carry a 20 per cent weightage in each of his KPIs:

1. Succession Planning in Key Roles: It has evolved from naming people who are already at CXO and CXO-1 in the annual talent review meetings to specific insights on readiness of talent that is ready for succession planning in terms of capability, and the actions taken to accelerate the readiness. This includes a tie-up with academic institutions on talent development. Additionally, diversity at the senior level has become an important metric for the Group.
2. Use of Technology in People Analytics: This is around deploying technology and AI in HR. There is an expectation at the board level to use HR Analytics to decide the areas that need immediate deployment/redeployment of resources, and use of Manager commentary from the Performance Management system to create ‘learning paths’ at the individual level.
3. External and Internal Talent Brand: HR Leader is to be the brand leader in upholding the brand reputation and visibility at all times to ensure that the external brand is consistent through the compelling stories that highlight the company’s unique culture to prospective hires.
4. Employee Productivity: This is measured by the cost of people versus the revenue as a percentage. In projects, it is the cost of people versus square feet constructed. This is true even in the manufacturing/automobile sector.
5. Capability Building: Moving away from the traditional approach of segmenting employees by career level, the focus has now evolved to talent development for business-critical roles. “We recently concluded a programme for Sales Project Heads in partnership with faculty from XIM and XLRI. We are also collaborating with best-in-class institutions to design structured learning paths for specific target groups, such as Project Managers and Engineering Graduates,” Iqbal says.

Usage of Technology in HR is a challenging aspect for Iqbal of Brigade Group. In his opinion, the most challenging KPIs are the areas that will have the biggest impact. “We are about to start working on predicting attrition so that HRBPs can prioritise the people they should proactively speak to and eventually help them in their career journey. AI Coach is something that we are exploring, and piloting is about to start. This will enable coaching available at all levels in the organisation and not just at the senior level,” Iqbal says.

Rahul Pinjarkar, Former CHRO of Tata Chemicals, says, “Over time, my KPIs have evolved from tracking HR efficiency to measuring organisational capability and business resilience. Earlier, the focus was on metrics like hiring, attrition and process or audit compliance. But today, the weightages have decisively shifted towards building a future-ready organisation, from the standpoint of building leadership, depth, capability, architecture, culture and performance differentiation.”

“A significant shift has also been from activity metrics to outcome metrics, for instance, not just tracking learning hours, but measuring capability, depth, productivity, and impact and readiness of successes for the critical roles. This evolution reflects the changing expectations from HR to actively shape the future of the workforce,” he adds.

Pinjarkar’s last drawn KPIs were structured around four strategic pillars:

1. Capability building and workforce readiness to an extent of 30-35 per cent. This is from the standpoint of building enterprise-wide capability architecture, closing critical skill gaps, including digital and ensuring that the workforce is ready ahead of business needs.
2. Leadership pipeline and succession to an extent of 20-25 per cent. This is from the standpoint of depth and readiness of the leadership pipeline with a strong focus on proactive succession and risk mitigation for critical roles.
3. Performance and meritocracy to an extent of 20-25 per cent. This is from the standpoint of driving a high-performance culture through differentiated performance management, linking rewards clearly to outcomes and improving fairness and transparency in the process.
4. Culture, engagement and inclusion to an extent of 15-20 per cent. This is from the standpoint of strengthening organisational climate through continuous listening, inclusion initiatives and enhancing employee experience.

“There is also an embedded focus on data technology and predictive talent analytics as an enabler across all these areas,” Pinjarkar points out.

According to Pinjarkar, the most challenging goal is building future-ready capabilities at scale while delivering immediate business outcomes. “In a large organisation like the one I was working in, creating a structured capability architecture and driving adoption across all levels requires sustained behavioural change from employees, managers and leadership teams. The challenge is not in designing interventions, but in ensuring that they translate into measurable capability shifts and business impact. Additionally, balancing long-term capability building with short-term performance expectations makes this a continuously evolving challenge,” he says.

“Organisations today are navigating a dual challenge, driving short-term performance while simultaneously preparing for disruptions in skills, technology and ways of working. Upskilling and reskilling at pace, especially in a large and diverse workforce, requires sustained investment, leadership alignment and cultural shift. The complexity lies not in defining the agenda, but in executing it consistently across levels,” Pinjarkar adds.

Metrics that organisations should track

Looking ahead, Mishra of Panasonic Life Solutions says that organisations should move beyond lag indicators and track leading metrics such as workforce agility, leadership pipeline readiness, culture health, and the effectiveness of leadership decisions. “In markets like India, compliance has also emerged as a strategic KPI, with increased focus on wage structures, social security costs, and statutory risk management. Employee experience metrics are becoming more hyperlocal, moving away from one-size-fits-all engagement scores to contextual measures reflecting frontline realities and cultural nuances. Meaningful KPIs for CHROs must therefore align closely with long-term business value, balancing global consistency with strong local accountability to build agile, future-ready organisations,” he adds.

According to Iqbal of Brigade Group, displaying horizontal leadership is key to success for CHROs. The strong partnership of the CHRO with CXOs of other domains will lead to high performance of their teams. This means CHROs who have horizontal leadership are more successful in their roles. CHROs have to institutionalise an internal cross-functional feedback mechanism for this.

Iqbal further says that building the organisational culture is something CHROs should focus more on. It starts with the measurement of culture through culture pulse surveys, identification of teams which have very positive scores and very low scores, studying them, and driving actions. “The most important thing here is the courage to call out things that pull down the culture and then take action on what needs to change. Call things out that impact the reputation. Very recently, I had a situation where a new recruit was being warned, and the person was close to getting terminated. The allegation was that the person who was recruited in Sales did not follow the customer collection process that is laid down,” he says.

On further investigation, it was brought to light that the manager had not provided the required training to the new recruit. “In summary, we were not being fair to the new recruit. This is a good example of having ‘courage’ to stand up and do the right thing, and provide the new recruits with the right orientation. The culture is built by the power of one, slowly and steadily,” Iqbal says.

Pinjarkar also believes that organisations need to move towards metrics that reflect organisational readiness and adaptability. He reiterates that the CHRO’s KPIs must be anchored in business strategy, not HR processes, such as:

• Capability depth and skill readiness: This is not just training completed, but actual capability built across critical roles.
• Skill velocity: The speed at which new skills are being built or deployed in response to business needs.
• Leadership Risk Index: This refers to the strength and coverage of the succession pipeline for critical roles.
• Workforce productivity matrices: This is about output and value creation per employee, not just headcount matrices
• Internal talent mobility: This is about focusing on the effectiveness of deploying talent across roles and geographies.
• Culture and belonging indicator: Moving beyond engagement, measuring inclusion, trust and behavioural alignment matrices better capture how HR drives long-term competitive advantage.

“The starting point should always be the organisation’s growth transformation or innovation agenda. Secondly, organisations should shift from input-based matrices to outcome-based matrices, for example, from training hours to capability impact, or from hiring numbers to quality and business contribution. Thirdly, it is extremely critical to include leading indicators such as leadership, depth, skill readiness and culture strength, as these are the predictors of future performance. And last but not the least, people matrices should not sit within HR alone; they must be co-owned by business leaders, because ultimately, talent outcomes are business outcomes,” Pinjarkar says.