ASSESSING A COMPANY’S CAPACITY
TO GET PEOPLE TO PERFORM
Some employers have no difficulty finding and keeping employees but do have problems getting their staff to contribute at a high enough level to meet or exceed customer expectations of product or service quality. Not every company needs high performance from their staff. The company may be successful for reasons other than product or service quality such as lower price, more convenient location, unique product or service, plenty of cash reserves or whatever.
Companies that need high performance workplaces typically meet the following criteria..
1. FRONTLINE EMPLOYEES POSSESS KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS THAT THE PEOPLE AT THE TOP DO NOT
2. EMPLOYEES CAN BE MOTIVATED TO APPLY THEIR SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE THROUGH DISCRETIONARY EFFORT
3. THE ORGANIZATION CAN ONLY BE SUCCESSFUL WHEN SKILLED AND MOTIVATED EMPLOYEES
CONTRIBUTE THEIR DISCRETIONARY EFFORT
The research on High Performance Workplaces is overwhelming. In his book, “The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First” from HBR Press, author Jeffrey Pfeffer, summarizes the current research and identifies eight characteristics of High Performance Workplaces as listed below. Follow this link to an online diagnostic tool to assess your organization against these characteristics...
1. SELECTIVE HIRING: Make it tough to get in. Use several steps in the selection process so that people feel that you are selective. Test beyond the technical skills. Interaction skills are as important as technical skills. Use the probationary period as an extension of the hiring process.
2. EMPLOYMENT SECURITY: For the employees that add value, offer them the comfort of a secure job. Find alternatives to layoffs. Enlist your employees in the search for new business. If you offer more security it makes you select staff more carefully and invest heavily in training of those you let in.
3. TEAMS: Look for opportunities to have people work in teams. Work on building team skills. Re-title team leaders to less authoritarian titles. Expand team boundaries to make work interesting.
4. DECENTRALIZED DECISION-MAKING: Use the Plan-Do-Check-Act model. Look at who does the “planning” and the “checking”, if possible assign it to the team. Trust the team to act responsibly. Head towards ‘self- management’.
5. PAY AND PERFORMANCE: Tie pay to performance. If you use teams, make performance pay team-based versus individual-based. If you can’t share profits share gains. If knowledge is critical to company success look at ‘Pay for Knowledge’.
6. TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT: Invest heavily in training. Encourage Multi-Skilling. Consider job rotation. Video tape your high performer and share the results with new employees as a learning tool.
7. REMOVE STATUS BARRIERS: Who is important? Who isn’t? How can you tell?
8. INFORMATION SHARING: Trust. No secrets. No lies. Open the books.
For manufacturers, the research also endorses the use of all of the tools that fall under the heading of Lean Manufacturing such as Just-in-time, minimize staffing, minimize ‘Work In Process’ buffers, short cycles,rapid set-up, small runs, focus factories, value chain analysis etc.
Indicators that your company may be having difficulty becoming a high performance workplace..
Indicators of “Performance” vary by company but most can use some gross indicators such as ..
- Turnover per employee: Total sales divided by the number of employees, the classic measure of productivity; the higher the figure, the more output is achieved by each employee.
- Profit per employee: Profit before tax divided by the number of employees. The higher the better and the safer the jobs.
- Return on sales (percentage): Profit before tax divided by turnover. The higher the figure, the better the performance of the organization.
- Return on capital employed (percentage): Profit before tax divided by the total of capital employed, including assets and long-term liabilities. The higher the figure, the better use is made of capital.
- Return on assets managed (percentage): Profit before tax divided by total tangible assets used by the business. As with the previous indicator, the higher the figure, the better use is made of capital.
ASSESSMENT TOOLS
‘Give us your feedback on Performance Management: a questionnaire for current staff about their satisfaction with the way performance is managed in your workplace
This questionnaire is a variation on the more generic questionnaire introduced in the section on Stay. This questionnaire zeroes in on performance issues and digs deeper into the reasons why your company may not be a high performance workplace. It can be given to all employees to complete as a paper and pencil survey. It can also be used as an interview guide. To take a look at a version of this questionnaire in Adobe click here.
ON-LINE VERSION You can also have your employees complete this questionnaire on-line. To see what the on-line questionnaire looks like, click on this link. To make arrangements to use the on-line version, e-mail Al Holmes at Sequus.
‘Year-End Employee Personal and Company Assessment’: a questionnaire for current staff about their performance and your company
This questionnaire is a tool that your company can use on an ongoing basis to monitor the performance management of each employee in the workplace. This is much more than a ‘performance evaluation’, rather it looks at the year from the employee’s perspective and asks how they are doing and what can the company do to make it easier for them to perform at their best. It can be given to the employee to complete as a paper and pencil task. To take a look at a version of this questionnaire in Adobe click here. This version can also be used as an interview guide.
ON-LINE VERSION You can also have your employees complete this questionnaire on-line. To see what the on-line questionnaire looks like, click on this link. To make arrangements to use the on-line version, e-mail Al Holmes at Sequus.
additional tools for assessing specific issues…
1.STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP
Performance is influenced by expectations. Research has shown that companies that expect high performance get it, those that do not, do not. Begin with a review of the strategic direction and goals of the company. Are they challenging and demanding of high performance or simply a straight-line projection of the past.
2.FRONTLINE MANAGEMENT
Frontline supervisors and managers are the organization’s performance managers. Ask yourself these kinds of questions..
- What expectations do managers have of their workers? Do they expect high performance? Mediocrity? Low performance? Remember, we get what we expect!
- How do managers lay out performance targets for their staff?
- What do front line managers do when they see an employee struggling to learn a new task?
- What do they do when they see good performance?
- What do they do when they see outstanding performance?
- What do they do when performance fails to meet expectations?
- What do they do when they see boredom?
- What do they do when they see an employee suffering from overload?
If the answer to all of the above is ‘nothing’ then performance is not being managed.
3.WORKPLACE CULTURE
High performance cultures differ significantly from laissez-faire cultures, authoritarian cultures, country-club cultures, competitive ‘gunslinger’ cultures, or ‘do nothing’ cultures. Take stock of your culture by using instruments such as the Organization Culture Diagnostic Survey introduced in the 'Stay"section . Or simply ask yourself questions such as ........
- Who are the heroes around here? Who are the counter-culture heroes?
- Who are the informal leaders? Where are they taking us?
- How do we treat high performers?
- How do we treat low performers?
- What are the legends? What stories get repeated? What is the message?
- Is it OK to be a high performer in this company? Is it not OK to be a high performer?
4.WORK-LIFE BALANCE
High performance cultures can be hard on work-life balance. A long term, high performing organization must find a balance between meeting work demands and meeting life demands and there is ample evidence now that there is a connection between work-life balance and long-term organizational performance.
5.COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS
Pay for performance is a complex topic. High performance organizations reward high performance tangibly as well as intangibly. But be careful what you reward. Individual reward schemes produce competitive cultures and that may be good for the organization. Team-based reward schemes produce cooperative cultures and that may be good for the organization. Check out whether people perform independent of one another as in sales territories in which case individual rewards may be best. If they are interdependent, then team-based incentives may be best. In high tech workplaces with long learning times, check out ‘pay for knowledge’ schemes in which the more you know how you have, the more you are paid.
6.JOB/WORK DESIGN & STRUCTURE
Some would argue that performance is entirely a function of work design. Poorly designed work processes produce poor performance. Well-designed work processes produce high performance. While we would not go that far, check out whether or not someone who wants to perform at his or her best actually can.
7.LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT
The success of some organizations, especially those with complex technologies, depends entirely on continuous, incremental learning and the occasional breakthrough. But even low-tech organizations can benefit from structured examinations of what is being learned on a daily basis and how that learning can impact future success.
Ask if people know what the ‘critical success factors’ are in the industry in which they compete. If they know what they are, do they know how they are doing relative to the competition on each factor? If they know the answers to these questions, then do they know what they must do to close any gaps that might exist? If they don’t know the answers to any of these questions then they may be a long way from a high performance workplace.
In addition, there is a direct link between performance and individual competence. A tool was introduced in the Stay section to assess worker competence. To download a copy of Core Competencies for a New Workforce click on the title.
ON-LINE VERSION You can also complete the above questionnaire on-line. To see what the on-line questionnaire looks like, click on the link below. To make arrangements to use the on-line version, e-mail Al Holmes at Sequus.
8.WORKPLACE DIVERSITY
High performance in some workplaces comes from continuous creative responses to ever changing demands. For those competing in global marketplaces, the challenge can be even more complex. We know from research that creativity and innovation is enhanced by the diversity of the persons who are developing the responses (and that repetition, predictability and uniformity is enhanced by homogeneity). Diversity comes in many forms including the usual race, gender, culture, and age but it also includes personality differences, experience differences, ability differences and differences in life situation.
