If like me you thought that high performance working (HPW) was something that grew out of the total quality movement so popular among Japanese and then American companies in the 1980’s, you might be forgiven for thinking is has been superseded by issues such as engagement, talent management or human capital.
However the debate goes on and policy makers are getting more and more interested in the issue as a way of driving productivity and hence national prosperity. There has been much debate over what HPW actually is and various proponents of the concept have put forward lists of practices which whilst overlapping, often vary quite considerably. The general consensus is that whilst there is no one definitive list of practices that will drive performance, HPW describes an approach to managing organisations that aims to stimulate discretionary effort and develop and utilise skills.
But is this any different to good HR? Surely good people management practice is all about maximising individual performance and ensuring people have the right skills to do the job and are able to apply them in a way that adds value? Don’t we have practices called performance management to take care of that?
Whatever the answer it appears there is significant scope to encourage HPW. According to a 2008 survey by the UK Commission of Employment and Skills, just under a third of organisations take a HPW approach. Of course this may be because they are not sure what the term means. However a range of other projects linking “good” HR practice to organisational performance by respected academics also found a relatively low take up of really pretty basic practices such as formal training and development or formal feedback on job performance.
One of the problems with HPW is that it’s holistic in nature. It’s not enough to tinker around the edges. One of the great debates has been whether there’s an HPW “bundle” of practices that makes a bigger difference than another set of practice. That is followed by another debate about internal or external fit of that “bundle”. Or rather, whether the practices in the bundle need to fit together to reinforce each other or with the external context to address the strategic imperatives of the organisation. To date no one has managed to provide conclusive evidence for or against the bundle but the arguments that practices need to fit together in some way are pretty compelling.
And this brings us back to the issue of why HPW is back on the policy agenda. Yes sure there are a number of “good” HR practices which form the backbone of the best HR strategies but to reap the full advantage in terms of increased productivity and performance there needs to be some kind of planned approach. We all know engagement is a good thing and talented staff a must, but engagement and talent have to be directed to add real value to the business. Its not enough just to have a high engagement score to develop skills we must also have the processes and practices, attitudes and behaviours in place to make sure they are the right skills, that people are able to use them to add value and that engagement is manifested in a real willingness to do a good job, try new things and adapt to change not just satisfaction with the status quo.
I agree wholeheartedly, Angela. In HR we often concentrate on the inputs to performance and ignore the measurement and evaluation of the outputs. Leadership is another area where we spend lots of time on Leadership development without understanding how to measure the successful output. An interesting and thought provoking Blog.
Thought provoking comments Angela- many thanks.
I agree that HPW is much more than introducing sound HR or leadership practices.
HPW is complex and is influenced by a multitude of factors including: team culture, organizational culture, individual’s behaviour or personality, leadership approach, levels of accountability and performance, goal clarity, how HR practices are implemented, generational differences, level of change, economic or business performance, to name a few. It’s difficult to bundle these things together under a single “magic bullet“ solution.
Is it about raising team members and leaders awareness of the range of factors that support HPW and how they personally impact the work within their own team? It likely requires a further shift away from "one size fits all" approaches to leadership and HR practices to something better tailored to meet the needs of individual teams or their members.
Angela - I totally agree.
I'm currently promoting a focus on HPW in the business I work in - as a way to ensure that other initiatives, such as engagement and talent management are seen as being aligned to business performance, not simply 'nice to have' options.
Step one of this has been the development of a training programme for line managers introducing the idea of managing for high performance. Step two will be a performance management system which focuses on communicating business objectives and engaging people in their delivery.
I agree with Paul that this means a move away from the one size fits all approach to leadership. In my view it also means that HR needs to provide the tools that will facilitate HPW, without dictating how leaders lead.
Interesting times!
totally agree with Jane...
and thankyou for simplyfying the whole thing, i was kind of lost reading the arguments.
Hold on there everyone, let's go back one step and ask the question - what determines the performance of an organisation? The system (i.e. the way the work works,) or the individual people?
If you understand anything about the work of W E Deming, or Duran, or Seddon, or hundreds of Systems Thinkers, then you'll know that around 95% of the performance of the organisation is due to the system and 5% due to the individual. Therefore, why does HR and the business focus so much on the people and doing stuff TO the people?
In my experience the 'bundle' tends to be dominated by the current paradigm of doing things TO the people rather than helping the people do things to the system, i.e. analysing the what and why of current performance, and then redesigning the work, gaining control over their work and delivering better service, reducing costs and increasing morale - at no time does this entail many elements of the typical bundle of people management activities.
Please go back to the basics and change thinking.
Intesting thoughts Andreas - I share the same view regarding taking a systemic approach and I believe this is what Angela referred to when she mentioned that HPW is holistic in nature and it is never enough to "tinker at the edges". The bulk of the literature out there appears to be obsessed with labelling things and putting them neatly into little boxes in the name of defining HPW. Perhaps this takes us right back to the paradox of categorisation...and so ad infinitum!
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