Is it more important for you to create a healthy organisational culture to focus solely on performance and output? Well, you can definitely prioritise both without having to make sacrifices to either – even in the current climate.
For decades it has been argued that there’s a relationship between culture and performance, and rightly so.
However, in order to measure the relationship between the two, both culture and performance have to be defined (and communicated) across your organisation. This is especially true for your values and how they contribute to your wider mission.
The long and short is that they’re both needed to power each other. It’s not so much as them facing off, but them working together to power a successful performance culture. This is need more than ever to drive positive business outcomes in the face of uncertainty, chaos and unpredictability.
Let’s take a look at how your company’s culture can help drive performance, and how you can get started building a high-performance culture in your organisation.
The importance of a strong culture
Every company strives to give the best experience to their employees as well as customers. One of the factors that enhances employee experience within an organisation is company culture.
You should reflect who you are as an organisation and how you believe a company should be run through the way you conduct business, manage workflow and teams, and interact with your customers. Essentially, your culture is a reflection of your company’s beliefs in real time.
If your values don’t align with your culture, however, that can be a problem. You may not recognise your “core values” as anything more than meaningless buzzwords slapped on your ‘About Us’ page.
Despite the need for an organisational culture that’s healthy enough for it to grow, we believe that organisation culture is either “aligned or unaligned” with its strategic purpose. It’s not the strength of a culture that determines growth, but the right culture that does.
How culture affects performance
A company with a strong and positive company culture survives and thrives because employees are aware of their expectations and the company’s goals, regardless of where they work.
Deloitte’s study on Core Beliefs and Culture revealed that 94% of executives and 88% of employees believe a distinct workplace culture is important, with a crucial difference in performance between companies that simply talk about their culture and those that embed these beliefs into their operations.
A good place to start is to understand exactly what good performance really means to you. Performance culture asks you to define what you might already believe is known across your organisation and turn it into actionable, tangible benchmarks and goals to strive for.
The 6 key characteristics of a high-performance culture
What does it mean to have a high-performance culture?
There’s more to it than meets the eye. Our measurement of success evolves along with our workforce. Even two years ago, you might have had a different answer if you asked what a successful high-performance culture looked like – both generally and internally at your organisation.
1. A great employee experience
Employee experience influences culture, as culture influences employee experience.
In today’s competitive market, employee experience is critical in attracting and retaining top talent. When employers focus on employee experience, they reap the benefits of a more productive, creative, and loyal workforce.
Maintaining the best employee experience at your company is the key to retaining and motivating your workforce and ensuring better business results. Neither party loses.
Delve into Employee Experience
2. Defined values and purpose – that’s embodied across the org
To connect corporate culture and performance, your cultural values must be evident throughout your workforce. Even seemingly corporate culture must be driven by something, even if it’s not clear and reinforced in messaging and internal comms.
Are your company’s core values being implemented? What role does purpose and meaning play in your company’s culture? Do employees understand how their efforts contribute to the organisation’s mission?
McKinsey reports that 85% of executives and top management are tied to a sense of purpose in their job. Compare this to only 15% of frontline leaders and staff, and it truly shows how important it is to get everybody involved in objectives, decision making, company culture and goals.
For example, you may discuss your core beliefs with your employees and get their feedback to help develop the definitions, embed these values in your HR procedures (and identify which values match which jobs in your organisation), and build a story that demonstrates these ideals.
Simply having values and a sense of purpose will not suffice. Organisations need to ensure that their workforce understand the relationship between their job and the organisation’s purpose.
3. Alignment across all the organisation
Employees are 3.6x more likely to be engaged if their manager involves them in goal setting for performance management purposes.
Gallup found work structure has an influence on employee engagement and performance. With this in mind, managers should work to cut friction, gaps in communication, and overwhelming challenges.
Organisations all around the world are being pushed to adapt to a fast changing business environment. As a result, having team members who understand and support the company’s fundamental purpose is becoming increasingly important, and a high performance culture is one step to encouraging holistic alignment.
We frequently come across organisations that are not strategically aligned here at There Be Giants. And they’re typically the ones who struggle to decide what to prioritise, make less effective decisions, and have far more challenges.
Solving the disengaged workforce
4. Learning and development opportunities
In order to sustain long-term performance, high-performance organisations understand the importance of continuously upgrading people’s skills and knowledge.
Cultures of learning are effective ways to motivate employees to learn new skills and become more engaged. Provide employees with ongoing growth and learning paths instead of occasionally introducing off-the-shelf training.
Those companies with high-performance cultures go beyond saying they want employees to be empowered; they equip them with the skills and knowledge to make informed decisions.
5. Innovative and future-minded leadership
Team performance is founded on the basis of strong leadership. Leaders set the tone, convey goals, and directly influence employee performance in several ways.
Leaders actively promote goal achievement and are a catalyst for team success in a high-performance work culture, setting the standard for performance via their own behaviours and actions.
Leaders of high-performance teams inspire and motivate their staff to give their all to the initiatives at hand. They serve as both a cheerleader and a coach, building an environment in which employees are motivated and inspired.
All organisations, regardless of the industry, experience constant change, even those with a high-performance culture. However, leaders and their workforce in high-performance cultures approach change as an opportunity, rather than just an obstacle to be overcome.
Leaders who adopt a future-minded mindset see incredible results. According to BetterUp, future-minded leaders – defined as the ability to think about the future and envision what’s possible – and their higher-performing teams are:
- 25% more agile
- 19% more engaged as a team
- 18% more innovative
- More likely to show an increase in performance, resiliency, and risk-taking
Organisations with a high-performance culture aren’t afraid to rethink their strategy or reinvent jobs, work practices, or other internal processes to achieve results. They plan for and embrace change and leverage it to spur innovation – something we can all learn from in the upcoming months.
6. Communication, recognition and feedback are regular
Regular and visible employee recognition is another way to bind your corporate culture and performance together. Companies that place a high priority on recognising and celebrating the individuals and teams who achieve their goals inspire others to achieve their targets.
Leaders with a high-performance culture express precise, quantifiable, and action-oriented goals when defining objectives and providing feedback. They communicate with empathy and provide feedback that fosters trust and inspires people to achieve their full potential.
The best part? This isn’t reserved for an annual appraisal that causes more anxiety than ambition. Building a growth culture is about collecting continuous feedback, pivoting when needed, and most importantly adapting and improving continually. Check out our blog 6 actionable ways to reward and recognise employee performance for more tips.
3 Benefits of high-performance cultures
Experience less employee turnover
A motivating culture will boost the morale of the entire workforce. Once the employees are at peace and happy with their workplaces, they stay loyal to the companies, and mutual trust and loyalty are built between the employers and employees.
The cost of replacing an employee is almost double the initial salary, so it’s also in the best interest of your bottom line to focus on retaining your high-performing employees as opposed to the costly option of replacing an employee.
Encourage idea generation
Fostering a collaborative, psychologically safe environment is essential to developing high-functioning, ambitious teams.
The more connected your employees are to the organisation’s purpose, and when they know what their place is in the organisation, the more likely they are to stretch to reach their full potential.
Having high-performing employees that are ambitious and want to grow with you as an organisation, brings more ideas to the table, and more innovative ideas whereby they can shoot for the stars.
Better potential for profit
Put simply, an engaged culture marked by high levels of involvement, consistency, adaptability, and a transparent mission improves sales and customer satisfaction.
Leaders in high performance cultures are enthusiastic about achieving difficult goals and demonstrate how to overcome bottlenecks to team execution. A leader who works hard to surpass sales objectives or master a new process, for example, will motivate their staff to do the same.
In summary
High-performance cultures can only be achieved if people believe they belong. It’s essential to recognise that belonging and performance go hand in hand.
Rather than explaining the “how” of your culture, explain the “why” so that employees understand the rationale behind important decisions, while allowing for variance and being open to different perspectives.
Clear company values can help to create a sense of shared purpose and direction, which can help to motivate and engage employees long-term.
If your employees believe that their work directly links to what you’re trying to achieve as a business overall, they are far more likely to perform to a high standard.
Culture vs performance is no debate, it’s clear that an organisation cannot thrive or survive without prioritising them both.
There’s no better time than now to initiate meaningful, important organisational cultural shifts. From re-examining company values and corporate culture to implementing and demonstrating positive behaviour changes – it’s not out of reach or something to put off until Q3.
Get started with our helpful guide that takes you through the 7 principles you’ll need to master to create a healthy culture, where performance is part and parcel!