High performance will show in employee attitude

Low-performing companies don’t create a stimulating work environment or inspiring culture.

Low-performing companies don’t create a stimulating work environment or inspiring culture — they simply get people to come to work, work hard, get paid and go home.

Insync Surveys recently conducted research involving the views of more than 100,000 employees from 200 companies to determine what differentiates high performance from low-performance companies.

Interestingly, the biggest differentiator between high and low-performance companies is to “live an inspiring vision”. High-performing companies build meaning, purpose and inspiration into their fabric and the jobs for their employees. This vision is integ­rated into their leadership, culture and messaging.

A compass is often used as a metaphor for an inspiring vision. A compass sets a clear direction but only points the way. The right vision will energise employees to get out of bed in the morning. As the picture of a compelling future is painted, discussed, upheld, referenced and lived every day, employees increasingly will be energised and drawn to it.

Communicating clear strategies and goals is the next fundamental step. This is about connecting employee actions with company goals. But, even in high-performing companies, we’ve found that only 54 per cent of employees say they can easily refer to a list of the company’s goals when they need to — this figure is only 24 per cent for low-performance companies. This is really frustrating because it is so easy to fix.

Imagine if someone removed the goalposts at an AFL or rugby union grand final. There would be a riot. Sure, most organisations dev­elop strategies and goals, but what they need to do is to get better at making them easy to understand and by communicating them in simple ways to employees at all levels.

If companies do the right thing by their people — that is to develop, recognise and genuinely care for them — it will turbocharge performance. Employees will buy in and apply extra discretionary effort to the achievement of company’s goals. But we need to be authentic in the way we implement these habits. If we’re not, employees will notice and withdraw their emotional and rational support. This is particularly the case for gen Y employees.

The next step is ensuring the company is customer focused. But, controversially, I actually believe employees must come before customers and before company profits. With employee engagement your people will build even greater levels of customer engagement. This is the only way to ensure that customers become loyal and advocate for the company, knocking down the door for your products and services.

Finally, it’s about improving systems or “greasing the wheels”. Your people shouldn’t be constrained by poor technology or too much red tape. Instead, free them to do their jobs and do them well. I believe in flexibility and empowerment; let’s encourage innovation and win the hearts and minds of our people.

A cumulative difference of only 7 per cent a year in performance and enterprise value perhaps doesn’t sound like much. But it will mean that a high performance entity will achieve double the growth in value of a comparable low-performance entity across a 10-year period. The difference between high and low performance is so significant it makes our research well worth a deeper look.

Nicholas S. Barnett is the chief executive of Insync Surveys and author of The 7 Business Habits That Drive High Performance.