04 Nov
While a healthy workplace culture is beneficial, a high-performance culture can be a strategic advantage and help organisations reach goals with the right workforce.
An ideal high-performance culture can be described in the following way.
This is an environment (physical or virtual) where the workforce is highly effective and supports the values and goals of the organisation with full zeal. This is an environment where the organisation does not hesitate to invest in tools, technology, and processes that benefit the employees and help their growth and advancement.
In other words, in a high-performance culture, the organisation fully supports the growth and development of the employees, and the employees, in turn, help the organisation achieve goals using their skills.
What is high-performance management?
While discussing high-performance work culture, we should also check in on another term, high-performance management. This is a set of processes and steps the management follows to encourage the development or sustenance of high-performance culture.
You will need to work on creating high-performance management processes from the very beginning to ensure you build an organic, high-performing culture. This must be a consistent and regular strategy that the management needs to work on.
How do you identify high-performance culture?
There are certain features of a high-performance culture that you can easily spot when you look at an organisation, its workplace, and its workforce. Some of these features are:
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Trust
Trust is a huge factor in any high-performance culture workplace. Trust flows both ways in these organisations. You will see less overseeing and monitoring by the management since it trusts the employees, and the employees are more honest and transparent.
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Clear direction
Both the management and the employees know their roles within the organisation, and they can clearly pinpoint short- and long-term goals. As a result, the organisation can have a clear direction and go that way. Clarity is an important feature of a high-performance culture.
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Shared goals
An organisation is a team of performing individuals complimenting each other’s work. That’s why people need to back each other up and share goals. This does not happen in an environment where there is constant competition, with employees vying to outdo one another’s efforts. In a high-performance culture, everyone appreciates each other’s skills and works on shared goals.
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Creativity
While creativity is important in all workplaces, in a high-performance culture, this becomes the backbone. Creativity grows in an environment that embraces changes and allows people to make mistakes as they learn.
Advantages of rearing a high-performance work culture
When you create high-performance management processes and build an environment of a high-performance culture, here are some of the benefits you will reap.
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Improved productivity
Thanks to a high-performance culture, the employees know what they are expected of, and the management offers all the necessary tools, environment, and processes to facilitate work. So, productivity organically improves.
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Lesser need for monitoring
A high-performance culture workplace is filled with people who love what they are doing, and that is why there will be a lesser need to monitor, motivate, or nudge employees constantly. Self-reliance, independence, and responsibility become part of the culture.
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Improved revenues
Owing to a high-performance culture, productivity increases, out-of-box ideas pop in, and effectiveness increases. Let’s say you charge your clients $200 for one hour of work. A particular task that would have taken 2 hours for any other organisation to complete gets finished in 1.5 hours, thanks to your organisation’s high-performance work culture. As a result, you get paid $200, and your employees have a half hour more to spend on other projects.
This, when compounded, increases revenue.
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Lesser attrition
The fundamental trick to building a high-performance culture workplace is to hire employees who thrive in such an environment. Once that is done, they don’t leave the company quickly. They enjoy the workplace and find the job challenging, and when they are respected for the work and paid well, they stick around, reducing the overall attrition rate.
Steps in manifesting high-performance culture at the workplace
As an employer, here are things you can do to manifest high-performance culture at the workplace and build a system that lasts.
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Encourage transparent communication
One of the first things to do when you want to manifest high-performance work culture is to encourage open communication. Make sure the existing hierarchy system allows for transparency in communication, and if not, make changes. Invest in tools that help the employees and the management reach out to each other quickly and whenever needed.
PossibleWorks’ continuous feedback tool facilitates 360-degree feedback and open communication across all levels. This tool is proven to improve employee engagement levels and performance, which would help fast forward a high-performance culture.
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Set clear goals
To help employees have a clear direction, set the right goals first. Establish SMART (i.e., specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals that integrate into the company’s bigger picture.
Have a clear differentiation of short-term and long-term goals and invest in goal-setting processes. Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are popular goal-setting frameworks you can refer to create effective and smart goal-setting processes and monitor progress.
We have a blog on the OKR cycle and how to implement that. You could read that after reading this one on a high-performance culture.
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Focus on career development
As an organisation, your end goals are productivity and performance. However, as a management, you need to genuinely focus on offering career development opportunities to your employees. When you help your employees grow personally and professionally, they will give back to the organisation themselves without you making demands. This will help build organic high-performance management scenarios that last.
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Set holistic company values and stick to them
As a company, the values you believe in and stick to become the basis for the culture you set up. The way to encourage high-performance culture is to decide on, create, and imbibe the right values.
More importantly, you need to believe and commit to these values fully. Consider this example. Your management talks about transparency in communication, opens feedback to all employees, and mentions this as one of the core values.
However, employees find their managers are hardly available for discussions when needed, and the CXOs cannot be reached anytime. What do all these say about the core value?
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Invest in the right tools, technology, and ambience
Employees need the tools and the right environment to work in, and the management must provide this. Do not try to cut back on costs when it comes to the devices the employees work with, the software they use, and the work environment. Having the best resources will help build a high-performance culture in any workplace.
Conclusion
High-performance culture benefits both the employees and the organisation in the long run. For the employees, such a culture helps empower them and upskill themselves. Such a culture encourages them to be creative, independent, and productive. For high-performance management, the benefits include increased revenues, accelerated growth, and better prospects as a business unit.
PossibleWorks helps clients create a high-performance culture with the existing resources they have. Do get in touch with us to know how we do this.
