MUMBAI: Pay-for-performance has come to stay in corporate India but the concept poses a challenge to HR professionals who have to formulate a policy that will truly reward performance and boost employee morale, industry experts have said. Retaining talent in companies is a major challenge before HR professionals but one must not go overboard with rewards and incentives, they said. "While pay-for-performance has come to stay, the challenge before HR professionals is to clearly identify who are performers. Besides, they have to see if the rewards and incentives should be financial or non-financial, long-term or short-term or whether a good performance during a particular period was the result of favourable circumstances like a policy change," said R Sankar, Executive Director and Head-People & Change Consulting, PwC India. He was speaking at a national summit on `Recent Trends in Compensation & Rewards' organised by the All India Management Association (AIMA). Vineet Kaul, Chief People Officer, Hindalco Industries, said a good framework for a pay for performance structure is very important but equally important is to achieve the desired results through it. "Organisations are now looking at pay-for-performance strategically and variable pay by companies has increased in the last few years." Pay-for-performance concept is seen as helping high performers, retaining talent and improving employee morale. It is, however, not a panacea for everything, Kaul cautioned.