This white paper illustrates the concept of high-performance, working, and its correlation to develop and enhance performance organizations.
The concept and components of HPW
The definition of High-Performance Working is a bundle of approaches to managing organizations that aim to stimulate more effective employee involvement and commitment to achieve high levels of performance.
High Performance Working practice is a management technique, which supports HPW to increase the organizational effectiveness through better-utilizing skills than developing them. Organizations that are strongly focusing on leadership, management style and workplace culture proved to provide much opportunity on skill utilization, which leads to higher productivity, thus, engaging employees in realizing their potentials. High performance working organizations stresses on the following:
- Permitting employees to speak up to influence business decisions, processes and work environment
- Participating in developing the organization
- Supporting flat structure organization for better skills utilization and decision making
- Creating healthier inter-personal business relationships
HPW emphasizes on the effectiveness of people management and development making it the core organizational strategy. Since workplaces became more complex, volatile, and ambiguous, organizations have changed their perspective to encourage innovative, genuine solutions and support learning through interactions, continuously enhancing the systems and processes concept in mind. HPW model breaks silos and lets people work in an organic way to create flow. The model is built on role accountability and employee competencies, which supports talent resourcing as well as learning and development activities afterwards.
Moreover, designing jobs takes better shape to create opportunities to contribute to: organizational performance through team involvement, better communication methods, and teamwork. Employee motivation practice is considered through: objective-based employee performance management system and a continuous feedback system, to enhance the system as well as the process. Rewards would vary between financial and non-financial. Fair treatment among employees and ensuring job security would tap on employee commitment; all the above components articulate as employee performance boosters.
HPW is an opposite methodology of “one size fits all”; conversely, it’s an approach of increasing customer value by providing innovative services. The components of HPW are:
- A vision to provide personalized and customized services for the customers to increase the value more than the satisfaction.
- Leadership should buy-in and support the concept and keep the momentum to measure progress.
- To be able to achieve this, the organization should be agile enough and provision the following:
- Held decision making with front-liners who are facing customers to be able to provide customized on-spot solutions, that create much value for customers
- Invest more time, money, and resources to develop employees on project-based initiatives, team capabilities, and self-management approaches to support overall organization performance and enhance sustainability.
- Encourage objective-based performance and people management to build that kind of trust, commitment, and enthusiasm.
- Build a strong reputation within the community by treating leavers with fairness and engage new joiners to get their support and build strong relationships with the external environment.
Evaluating the link between HPW and sustained organization performance
Employee well-being, and competitive advantage; a crucial question business leaders are asking: what makes sustainable organization performance and the role of HR in this process? Having said that, Sustainable Organizational Performance research made a tremendous effort over two years, where thousands of practitioners were involved to get the answer and put it into a practical context, http://www.cipd.co.uk/binaries/sustainable-organisation-performance_2011-stf.pdf. CIPD Study of 2011 revealed that three main themes driving sustainable organization performance: engagement, leadership, and organizational development.
Phase II of the study confirmed the significance of eight subsequent drivers important to motivate sustainable performance which is connected with HPW. Employees, who are managed very well by their line managers and are exposed to a corporate decision; being part of the organization and treated as an asset, are more likely to engage and perform at their discretionary effort. Senior Leadership team plays that vital role to live the core values, keep and spread the momentum. Accordingly, developing employees becomes within an organization’s nature, and shares knowledge, driving its competitive advantage.
On another hand, the eight drivers presented in the report are alignment, shared purpose, leadership, locus of engagement, assessment, and evaluation, balancing short and long-term horizons, agility, and capability building. A brief description and its link to HPW are illustrated hereunder:
Alignment is the perception of employees, of its aims and objectives, which are consistent and fit with other messages regarding values, behaviors, and organizational priorities. To translate alignment into HPW practice, organizational values need to be shown on employees’ attitude and behavior, individuals understand their responsibilities and how their role contributes to organizational objectives and success, furthermore, the systems and processes should be in sync with organizational goals and can serve customers’ demands to create value. Shared purpose or organization identity and why it originally exists is a thread of strategy.
The identity should be simple, clear, and well-communicated across the board so employees become emotionally attached, especially when it’s integrated with business targets and performance. During uncertain, ambiguous times, reviewing the shared purpose is essential, as some new values or purposes might emerge and the message should be spread across the organization. HPW is encouraged by sincere leadership activities; taking care of staff skills and continuously honing them to get great results. Coaching, mentoring, and empowerment are consistent parameters to drive sustainable performance within organizations.
Employees can be engaged with more than one level or even a bundle of levels at the same time. Having said that, the nature of engagement is dynamic; however, a drawback of being treated unfairly or injustice can change the engagement into blockage, since the individual is connected with multi-layers. To manage HPW, HR needs to collect data and work the data for the benefit of enhancing performance and maintaining a sustainable business. HR should capture and analyze the data, but interpreting the information into a business context is crucial. Although an organization focusing on the long-term goals assures all steps leading to the anticipated position, putting more time and effort on short term goals and objectives would be an internal sign of the health condition of the organization. Though the short-term goals consume plentiful time and effort, yet it supports achieving the long-term targets. HPW supports introducing more initiatives and ideas, which keeps the organization on constant change, thus, agility will enable such mindset.
HPW is focused on obtaining better results, introducing innovative ideas, and contributing to an organization’s success. To do that, having work-life balance in mind is essential to keep the momentum. Furthermore, the culture of HPWO supports the psychological contract through good management practices, and considers employees to be the most valuable assets. In addition, pushing HPW to cross their limits and achieve more through utilizing their skills would result in rewarding adequately based on the value they brought to the organization.
HPW is considered a competitive advantage because of the competent employees they have and the performance culture they create. Competitors will not headhunt HPWO’s staff only but will do their utmost effort to cope with their culture and create HPW and HPWP to stay in the market and be able to compete. Otherwise, HPWO will swipe out competitors or at least will shrink their market share to the limit till they go into acquisition deals or claim bankruptcy.
Main barriers of HPW
Organization’s practices and people’s attitudes would define the success or failure of HPW implementation. The transformation journey towards HPW needs full collaboration from all related parties and aspects sharing the same goal to put the organization onto the right track, to achieve sustainability and boost performance. However, lack of clear organization vision, mission, strategic plan, and purpose to let go of the old static operating model and creating a dynamic and agile practice to be able to continue competing in the market would be considered the first blocker of applying HPW.
Moreover, the type of culture that doesn’t support people and processes will always decline to create high performance working practices and organizations. Backward thinking management exercises will always miss connecting elements together and would create more hierarchal layers rather than shorten them. Time and effort of leadership, putting less sufficient budget and effort that supports implementing the HPW model would be considered as a stopper.
The one direction communication became obsolete in today’s corporate life, that excludes employees from being part of the decision making and practices. Missing the concept of enabling the employees by providing coaching sessions, mentoring programs, and online support would never help in creating high-performance work. The absence of capability and capacity of middle managers who should be the focus areas that would result in disengagement, unsupportive achievement stance, and less communication upwards and downwards. The inability of creating a clear, well-defined employee performance management system that differentiates between extraordinary and marginal performers, would never be a sign of HPW readiness.
A lenient management style that doesn’t support consequence management will be perceived always as less productive and unable to compete in the long run, putting organization sustainability on stake. The worst of all is when HR is unattached from the business and has limited knowledge of what the business needs.
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