According to the renowned business consultant Ken Blanchard, “None of us is as smart as all of us.” It clearly sums up the significance of relying on group genius. Decades of research suggest how a team works within themselves says a lot about how its outcomes are going to be.
High-performance work practices (HPWPs) are those that have been proven to boost an organization’s ability to recruit, evaluate, employ, train, and retain high-performing employees. When it comes to forming high-yielding teams and work environments, management should focus on the psychological needs of their employees the most as people will perform their best when they are healthier, happier and thus more driven.
Discussed below are five practices that help create a high-performing workplace:
- Delegation of responsibilities: Almost all the high-performing teams have job specialization as one of their key themes. When aware of the particular work that is expected of them, employees can leverage their individual strengths to achieve goals. This reduces duplication of functions which ensures efficiency. Departmentalization can be based on functions, geographical regions, types of goods or services et cetera.
- Improved engagement: Employees should be well informed of the organization’s missions and visions. Employee involvement in decision making makes them feel valued and this leads to maximizing individual productivity. Diverse thinking is to be encouraged. There is no one appropriate amount of employee participation because every organization is different and requires different kinds of handling. But a high-performing workplace has a perfect balance between centralization and decentralization.
- Bonding over non-work topics: It’s personal conversations that drive the revelation of shared interests that promote genuine ties and greater affinity. So we have to think a bit out of the box and believe that non-work topics often bring substantial benefits. Studies maintain that high-performing employees are found to be spending significantly more time with their colleagues where they build authentic connections chatting about topics that have nothing to do with work.
- Evaluation and adaptation: Measuring performance is one integral part of high-performing teams. They always tie back their work to their purpose and mend the lapses in accordance with that. Learning and adapting is how highest-performing employees explain their tenures. Necessary training and development programs provide employees with the impression that management cares about them.
- A culture of appreciation and recognition: High-performing teams give and receive appreciation more frequently. If you don’t have a support circle to share your victories with, your successes will start to seem meaningless and you will be rarely content. Crazy it may sound but research says recognition was found to be a much more powerful motivating tool than monetary incentives. Thus organizations are focusing on employee reward programs like giving shoutouts, offering personal development opportunities, sending care packages and so forth more than ever before.
To summarize, the findings of various studies reveal that establishing a high-performing workplace involves more than simply employing the appropriate people and providing them with the tools they need to execute their jobs. It necessitates the development of honest and authentic interactions.
Forging close bonds among teammates does not have to be costly or time-consuming. Every organization has the ability to nourish people’s basic psychological desire for belongingness and lift team performance by incorporating simple, evidence-based strategies that result in improved communication, more constructive meetings, and stronger connections.
