Full throttle: Creating a high-performance culture is a business imperative |
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Organizations today are
facing new, aggressive
growth targets and
renewed pressure to
get the best from their
existing workforce. Our
competitive and global business
landscape requires nothing less.
This means that many companies
are striving to become high performance
organizations - those
that attain results at or near the
top of their industry peers. Not all
organizations will succeed.
Those that do succeed will
employ leaders at all levels who are
passionate about two key concepts:
they will drive achievement through
the support they provide to others
who are pursuing aggressive goals
aligned to the business; and they will drive engagement by
creating an environment where people feel successful, valued,
and an integral part of what the greater team is trying to
accomplish.
Hewitt's recent Top Companies for Leaders study once
again highlighted the competitive importance of leaders who
have an unrelenting focus on talent, and who instill feelings
of commitment as opposed to compliance in their workforce.
They're able to channel the energy and spirit of the workforce
into an unwavering focus on results that matter to employees
and shareholders alike.
At the end of the day, employees who work in high-performance
cultures go home feeling proud of their
accomplishments and enthused by the tremendous
opportunity for personal and professional growth they see
for themselves at their organization - all of which makes a
measurable impact on their businesses.
Business context
Heightened pressure on organizations to maintain financial
transparency and meet compliance standards has increased
the momentum of business performance management
initiatives. At the same time, the speed and agility with
which a company manages performance in today's fast-paced
environment can determine its market position and
profitability.
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The economic recovery will come - it will come faster for
organizations with a high performance culture and engaged
workforce.
Businesses are driven by competitive pressures to reach
higher standards, capitalize on the interactions of their
people and processes, and optimize these to generate better
outcomes - essentially, what performance management is all
about.
Best-in-class organizations realize that the goal of
profitable growth and world-class performance cannot be
fulfilled without a high-performance organization.
An ambitious goal in even the best of times, it becomes
even more vital during a downturn. It can be achieved by
having a robust performance management system geared
toward building a high-performing workforce and being a
powerful driver of business success.
This task is particularly challenging as a result of the
overwhelming number of approaches to performance
management and the lack of consensus and understanding as
to which strategies effectively drive performance.
An ineffective performance management system is at the
root of many chronic problems that can cripple an organization.
Issues such as an inability to identify and clearly communicate
poor performance, sending conflicting performance messages,
failure to recognize and reward high performers, and
inequitable distribution of rewards are common roadblocks to a
successful employee performance system.
Despite such challenges, for many companies,
performance management remains the foundation of talent
management and, when effectively executed, can address
these issues by aligning the behavior of the workforce with
the strategy - and much more. |
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Rethinking performance management: An emerging direction
Many human resource programs, especially performance
management processes, are not designed to instill the levels
of commitment one needs to fuel a high-performance culture.
Instead, they instill feelings of compliance - forms that must be
completed by a certain date with little or no perceived relevance
to the business. Employees often have the same feeling they had
back in grade school, when they waited for the teacher to give back
their exam and hoped and prayed that they didn't see a big, red
"C" - or worse - at the top.
It doesn't have to be that way - and it isn't that way -
in high-performance cultures. Instead, business-focused
discussions and decisions are reframed in a performance and
development framework.
So what are the design elements that leading companies
incorporate into their performance management programs?
Organizations with high-performance cultures answer a
resounding "Yes" to the following four questions:
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Is there accountability for the right results, where everyone
is working on what's important, getting it done, and
playing by the rules? |
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Do people perceive that we provide the right mix of
rewards that reinforce great work, in the form of monetary
incentives and non-monetary recognition? |
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Is trust earned one person at a time, where people we depend
on feel valued and confident, ready to give their best? |
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Do we provide opportunity for impact and growth, where
there's skill-building in every assignment and job, guided
by business needs? |
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These four questions form a backdrop for a new framework
illustrated here.
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By following the design and execution elements
highlighted in the framework, leading organizations have
turned traditional performance management programs on
their head, and have provided a pragmatic and practical
approach to redesigning performance and development
frameworks that creates the conditions for people to excel
through seven logical elements that fall into four categories:
| Accountability |
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Set high achievement goals |
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Provide real performance coaching |
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| Rewards |
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Provide ratings that send the right message |
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Offer the "right" rewards to motivate sustained performance |
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| Opportunity |
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Build growth into every job |
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Direct people toward future-critical skills |
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| Trust |
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Conduct authentic, business-focused conversations |
In essence, an effective performance management framework
is able to:
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Focus employees on the right priorities |
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Make them feel accountable to deliver great results |
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Energize, engage, and position them to give their best and
feel that their best will be appreciated, and |
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Build skills key to the business going forward. |
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No doubt, performance management has become an
absolutely critical component of success if a company wishes
to deliver outstanding, world-class performance.
Design first, but focus on executing
It's important to note that, while all high-performance
organizations share these design elements, the business
payback is less about design and more about execution. A
well-designed program with little commitment to effective
implementation and execution can take you only so far.
Four key execution elements are particularly important to enable
the success of performance and development frameworks:
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A commitment to building manager capability and crosscultural
competence |
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Development of HR business partners as high-performance
consultants |
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User-friendly tools and automation |
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Ongoing measurement and improvement. |
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This is an extract of an article entitled, Rethinking Performance
Management as a Business Tool to Spark a High-Performance
Culture. To view the complete position paper, go to:
click here
Contact Philip Wixon (philip.wixon@hewitt.com) in Hong Kong.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS: Scott Cohen (scott.cohen@hewitt.com)
is a Principal in Hewitt's talent and organization consulting
practice. Nidhi Verma (nidhi.verma@hewitt.com) is a senior
consultant on Hewitt's Insights and Innovation team, a thoughtleadership
group dedicated to cutting-edge research on people
and business issues.
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Hewitt Quarterly Asia Pacific
is made possible through the combined skills and experience of Hewitt consultants from across the Asia-Pacific region.
For further information please contact:
Hewitt Associates
2601-05 Shell Tower
Times Square
Causeway Bay
Hong Kong
Tel: (852) 2877-8600
Fax: (852) 2877-2701
editor-hqap@hewitt.com |
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