How Khatabook Made Performance Ratings Align with Business Results using Peoplebox.ai
At a Glance.
The Challenge: A Disconnected Performance System
Khatabook faced significant challenges with their performance management process. The technology company had grown rapidly, but their performance review system hadn’t evolved alongside the organization. Reviews were conducted entirely offline, with multiple department heads (approximately 4-5) working independently and using their own frameworks. While they had implemented a module to collect performance ratings, it suffered from a critical flaw: Their CHRO remarked:
This fragmented approach created a system without central oversight, making it impossible to monitor progress, enforce accountability, or calibrate ratings fairly across different departments.
The consequences became evident during Khatabook’s April 2023 reviews, when approximately 90% of employees received ratings of 4 or above, despite the fact that business outcomes didn’t reflect that level of performance. Several goals were missed and deadlines weren’t met.
In a nutshell, their PMS looked:
- Disconnected: Reviews conducted offline by 4-5 department heads, each using their own approach
- Incomplete: Forms often unfilled despite ratings being submitted
- Opaque: No way to monitor progress or enforce accountability
- Misaligned: High ratings despite missed business goals
This raised a fundamental question for Khatabook’s leadership: Were they rating people too generously without appropriate accountability?
The Journey with Peoplebox.ai
Phase 1: Building Trust with Pulse Surveys
Khatabook’s partnership with Peoplebox.ai began not with performance reviews, but with implementing pulse surveys to gather employee feedback. One of the most significant challenges was employee participation – getting team members to actually complete the surveys.
Slack Integration: This feature became a critical selling point for Khatabook, where the entire organization operated on Slack. The integration made participation seamless for employees.
Simplified User Experience: The design philosophy prioritized reducing mental load with one screen, one question at a time, and one-click response options.
The results were quickly apparent through high internal NPS scores and positive sentiment reflected in external reviews, including Glassdoor feedback.
Phase 2: Expanding to OKRs
Building on the successful pulse survey implementation, Khatabook expanded their Peoplebox.ai usage to include the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) module. This addition helped structure organizational goals and increase accountability through transparent progress tracking.
Phase 3: Co-Creating a Performance Review Solution
In October 2023, Khatabook recognized the need for an advanced performance review system. However, they discovered that Peoplebox.ai’s performance review module was still in development.
Rather than waiting or selecting another vendor, something remarkable occurred. Khatabook actively drove demand for the feature to be developed and customized to their specific requirements. The two organizations didn’t merely implement a standard solution—they collaboratively built the performance review module together.
This partnership approach resulted in an extraordinarily rapid implementation timeline:
This enabled Khatabook to meet their performance review deadlines while implementing a system tailored to their exact needs.
The Design Philosophy at Peoplebox.ai — Intentional Simplicity with Purpose
A key factor in the success of the Peoplebox.ai implementation was the product’s underlying design philosophy, built on intentional simplicity, driven by purpose.
That same ease and thoughtfulness were core to Peoplebox’s design. But what truly set it apart wasn’t just the interface, it was the people behind the product. Swapna spoke in depth about how much she valued working with Alagu, the CTO of Peoplebox.ai, calling him “the best product guy we have as a country.”
The result was a tool that remained “clean, intuitive, and conservative in the right way” rather than becoming “run-of-the-mill” through feature bloat.
The Differentiator: Vendor to Partner Mindset
What distinguished this implementation was the collaborative approach between Peoplebox.ai and Khatabook. The relationship transcended the typical vendor-client dynamic, becoming a true partnership focused on solving fundamental organizational challenges.
Khatabook’s leadership specifically noted the approach of Peoplebox.ai’s CTO, who questioned each requirement deeply to understand the underlying needs, rather than simply accepting feature requests at face value. This thoughtful product development philosophy ensured that Peoplebox.ai didn’t become overloaded with unnecessary features, but remained focused on delivering genuine value.
The result was a performance management system characterized by:
Clarity : Clean interfaces that made information accessible
Quality : Prioritizing effectiveness over feature quantity
Flexibility: Adaptable to organizational needs without overwhelming complexity
Purpose : Focused on solving real problems rather than checking feature boxes
Results: Transforming Performance Culture
The implementation of Peoplebox.ai across Khatabook delivered substantial improvements in both process efficiency and outcome quality:
Review Timeline:
Performance reviews that previously stretched from March to June (3+ months) were now completed within the same month.
Completion Rate:
Reviews and subsequent compensation adjustments were completed on schedule, with no missed deadlines since implementation.
Rating Normalization:
In just two review cycles, without any explicit policy changes, Khatabook's performance rating distribution naturally evolved into a more balanced bell curve that better reflected actual performance differences.
Business Alignment:
Performance data now aligned more accurately with business outcomes. This alignment made gaps easier to identify, which helped the leadership team plan and prioritize more effectively.
Administrative Efficiency:
Reviews and subsequent The intuitive interface required minimal training and support, reducing the administrative burden.
Accountability Framework:
The structured system—anchored in OKRs and the performance management system, and rooted in organizational values—helped employees clearly understand how their performance was measured, creating greater personal accountability.
Performance Review Platform
Get a glimpse of how Peoplebox.ai makes performance reviews painless, actionable and fair.
