High Performing Organisations Improving individual and organisation performance is going to be on all our minds for the foreseeable future. HR has been working with a range of tools and techniques for 50 years. How successful have we been? What has worked and what hasn’t? Why are some organisations so much more effective than others? Is it the quality and calibre of people or the way they are organised and managed? Analysis or best practice?

Three Questions About High Performance So what do we mean by performance? Definition is: “To deliver against a standard or expectation” “The ability of a unit to accomplish some desired result” But how difficult is it to measure and assess individual performance? Can we really evaluate or judge individuals and their performance? Are you happy with objective setting processes etc? Is performance relative or absolute? Do you rate teams or individuals? In whose opinion? Performance or compliance? Do you evaluate what’s important? And how difficult is it to assess an organisation's performance? What are key financial measures and why? What are key non-financial measures and why? Over what timescale? Are you concentrating on the right things? Three Questions About High Performance

Ease of implementation 1. What are we doing about it? Is HR working on the right things? Where do HR’s “products” appear in the 4 box model? What do HR’s customers want? Added value is in the eyes of the receiver, not the giver. What are the business bottlenecks? Where does incentive pay, performance appraisal, coaching appear? What’s in the bottom left i.e. Hard to do, little added value”? What’s in the top right i.e. “easy to do, high value”? Do you have an organisation-wide “breakthrough objective”? What are the 5 things HR can do to promote “high performance”? Ease of implementation Easy Hard Low High Added Value

2. Do we need to improve the individual or the organisation? Creating a Great Environment Great People Intellect Disposition Motivation Development Skills Feedback Experience Individual Values Great Environment Clear direction Continuity Team based Spirit of community Compelling strategy Right organisation structure Good processes Enterprise Values The right people Time for decision making Average people encouraged to do well by great “can do environment” High calibre people, high performance culture Capable people, performance restricted by context Low calibre people in restricting environment What factors influence this? Developing Great People Which axis are you working on? Which axis should you be working on? Where are you as an organisation? Where should you be as an organisation? What is your plan for movement? What do you think is meant by the descriptors? What other descriptors would you add? Please develop 5 areas which would if tackled enhance high performance.

3. Have you got robust processes? What are you trying to “improve”? Do you have clear, agreed, written processes for performance improvement which are utilised and internalised? Do your processes have a start, finish, an output, added value and a customer? Are business processes and HR processes consistent and linked e.g. Pay, Appraisal, Business Strategy, People Development, Retention? Are they widely understood and written down? What happens to the output? What data collection takes place? Do you have focus e.g. Breakthrough objectives. Who owns the process – HR, CE? The Executive Committee? Is performance discussion dominated by pay? Are you working on individuals, teams or the organisation? How do you evaluate your endeavours? Please give five principles of “good practice”.