High-performance working or HPW focuses on a culture in which there’s transparency, trust, and open communication. It means eroding the conventional hierarchical structure in which numerous businesses still function.
This entails creating a flatter structure where workers are satisfied, engaged, motivated, and understand an organization’s behaviors and values.
These days, collaboration is a key pain point for virtually every organization. Businesses must understand that today’s workers are empowered, constantly learning, and can maintain productivity from anywhere.
In identifying these trends, organizations are increasingly becoming open to flexible schedules, telecommuting options, and geographically distributed teams.
Teams encounter difficulties in information sharing and being able to act quickly. This calls for the implementation of collaboration tools to streamline workflows while keeping team members connected. This article examines important aspects of HPW followed by a review of collaboration tools that support an HPW culture.
What is High-Performance Working?
High-performance working is a series of policies, practices, and processes, which organizations put in place and can improve employee performance when working harmoniously. High-performance work practices are most useful when grounded on organizational needs. Therefore, organizations have the freedom to choose the methods that match their strategies, business model, and objectives best.
High-Performance Work Systems
High-performance work systems (HPWS) create a business environment that permits greater responsibility and involvement among employees. In this system, organizations perceive employees as valued business partners, making it possible to build and sustain a competitive advantage from the dedication of employees to help a business thrive.
A major benefit of implementing a high-performance work system is an increase in business efficiency and productivity.
Features of HPW Systems
Employees that work in a company implementing HPW typically benefit from training, careful recruitment, better compensation, and more commitment and motivation. Furthermore, employees are encouraged to air their concerns.
Airing Concerns
In an HPW system, employees can air their grievances and concerns. This means they can confidently request improvements. This enhances team performance and employee attitudes.
If employees know how to enhance customer service, it’s important that they too feel comfortable when making suggestions. This can enhance the decision-making process by empowering personnel to be active participants. In turn, this has a direct impact on business efficiency and employee productivity.
Regardless of size, every business experiences inefficiencies that affect staff productivity and the bottom line. Companies that implement these systems are usually employee-driven, bottom-up organizations that encourage inclusion and employee participation.
Employee Training
Constant employee training is a cornerstone of HPW systems. Employees who understand their role fully are usually motivated and engaged.
Regular development and training have a positive influence on employee satisfaction, enhancing the efficiency of processes and morale. This helps decrease employee turnover and the associated expenses involved in onboarding and recruitment.
Ongoing training that prepares employees to take further responsibility is an effective motivator and gives employees enhanced skills to help customers.
Enhance Business Efficiency and Productivity
An important benefit of HPWS is that it enhances efficiency and productivity. Satisfied and motivated employees usually work as productively and diligently as possible for their company’s benefit.
All facets of an HPWS foster enhanced productivity. Enhanced efficiency in procedures, systems, and ways of working originate from the employees’ ability to voice concerns and become part of overhauling and enhancing any outdated practices.
What Are High-Performance Work Practices?
The term describes a set of consistent and coherent practices that view people as a source of competitive advantage. These practices aim to promote employee motivation, knowledge, and commitment. They further empower employees which helps organizational performance and efficiency.
High-performance work practices or HPWPs entail considerable investment in human capital. It empowers workers by developing their skills, knowledge, and motivation with the anticipation that the employer will offer them the chance to offer input on workplace decisions.
In return, organizations expect empowered employees to adapt quickly to fast-changing market conditions, thus enhancing operational efficiency and company performance.
Barriers to High-Performance Working
The following are barriers to high performance working:
Hierarchical Structures
Failure to eliminate conventional hierarchical management systems can block HPW. In a hierarchical system, managers make decisions and employees take orders. This means employees and the management can’t have a mutual agreement on decisions, thus preventing shared responsibilities and leadership.
Recruitment
A job description is a barrier to HPW if an organization doesn’t write clear descriptions that reveal how an individual’s responsibilities and tasks drive company profitability and goals. This means that employees don’t know how they can enhance profitability through their roles.
Furthermore, most hiring managers recruit those they like or those they relate to; this can affect HPW in an organization.
How Does High Performance Working Impact Organizational Practices?
The implementation of HPW within an organization yields a positive impact on organizational practices through profitability, higher employee satisfaction, and increased innovation.
Tools To Achieve HPW
Collaboration tools permit a more harmonized workflow by offering a unified platform for file sharing, team discussion, and online storage for task assignments and documentation.
When all files are centralized in the same place, an organization gains from clearer information exchange and avoids miscommunication. Some collaboration tools for enabling high-performance working include:
Slack
The chat platform helps teams contact one another during their workdays. The intuitive and user-friendly platform is mobile-friendly and customizable to a company’s communication needs.
Teams can build integrations with their analytics, transaction platforms, and spreadsheets to set up automated alerts and reminders. This allows team members to remain connected regardless of their location.
ClickUp
The collaboration tool comprises powerful elements for collaboration and communication. These include notifications, a chat function, the ability to have discussion threads, etc. Furthermore, it comprises features for collaborative sharing, creating, and editing of documents.
It also allows users to comment on tasks and documents, chat with team members, and assign comments.
Forecast
This collaboration and project management tool allows users to manage resources, projects, and finances. Forecast comprises a task list element that displays priorities for team members as well. Another benefit is that it incorporates mainstream management tools with QuickBooks.
Conclusion
Nowadays, organizations are going beyond decreasing cost and space by taking initiatives to transform the work setting. Consequently, organizations are adopting collaborative tools to enable high-performance working. By drawing on resources such as these, companies can make a smoother, faster transition to high-performance work culture and reap the benefits that come with it much sooner.