When employees perform, organizations can succeed
Today, HR works hard to ensure individuals have the environment and means to perform. This starts with listening to every employee, involving them in continuous improvements, and basing performance on well-being.
Our approach to employee performance is organizational, team, and individual. The organization must set the framework and promote an environment conducive to performance. A team forum provides an opportunity for ongoing dialogues about translating strategy into action. Each individual is responsible for reflecting, living the culture, and sharing feedback and improvement suggestions.
Why employee performance is important
- Overall success: Employee performance directly contributes to whether an organization successfully achieves growth, profitability, and objectives.
- Employee engagement: Employee performance is, in part, a reflection of and influences employee engagement.
- Employee experience: The way an employee perceives employee performance impacts their employee experience. A positive employee experience is more likely to drive outperformance.
- Customer experience: Employee performance impacts a customer’s perception and retention.
- Innovation and creativity: High-performing employees often use their creative thinking to generate new ideas and find different ways to solve problems.
- Productivity and efficiency: Strong employee performance is often characterized by high productivity and efficiency.
- Internal employer identity: Own and colleagues’ employee performance in part shapes the way an employee views the organization as their employer.
- External employer image: Employee performance affects an outsider’s perception of the organization as an employer.
How your employee survey facilitates employee performance
Listen
Regularly listening to your employees, who are closest to executing the strategy, gives you the full picture of how well the organization can fulfill its objectives. Populum lets you hear every voice.
Understand
Turning your people’s feedback into insights effectively explains where you are today and what your journey so far has looked like. Populum also predicts the future of areas such as sick leave and employee turnover.
Act
Understanding everyone’s input makes the next steps well thought-through. Populum’s smart recommendations make continuous improvements effective and sustainable.
What is employee performance?
Employee performance is how an employee conducts their work and its outcome. It depends on various aspects, including the work environment, an employee’s behavior, experience, skills, attitude, organizational culture, and the manager’s leadership style. Employee performance impacts team and organizational performance.
There are many tangible and intangible parts of employee performance, and we explain the concept in relation to using your modern employee survey to understand and improve it.
How can employee performance and productivity be improved?
Employee performance and productivity can be improved in many ways. The key is knowing what to change or what areas to support to improve employee performance and increase productivity. A modern employee survey is very useful for learning this. Listening to employees who perform the daily responsibilities lets you understand current challenges and opportunities and what works well and can be used as best practices. Employee performance and productivity improvements are commonly addressed based on organizational, management, and employee-related issues and require different solutions.
Organization
Organizational issues involve the organizational culture, work environment, vision and strategy, processes, and career development.
When conducive to employee performance, organizational culture can serve as a competitive advantage. Building an organizational culture centered around social belonging is especially important for employee performance.
The work environment is another important area to ensure it supports employee performance. It includes both the physical and the psychological environment employees experience. Examples include providing an ergonomic workstation, enough time to perform tasks, options to work remotely, and the feeling of being able to safely express opinions without fear of being reprimanded or losing advancement opportunities.
A clear and compelling vision and an effective strategy allow employees to understand what the organization aims to achieve. Together with their manager, the employee can back-track the organizational objectives to their own contributions and increase the likelihood that their performance leads to success. When employees do not know or understand the vision and strategy, senior management must clarify them.
Outdated processes can hold employee performance and productivity back. Organizations must adopt a continuous improvement mindset where processes are continuously evaluated and updated.
A lack of career development can slow employee performance and productivity. While some people do not want extensive career development, organizations must provide options for those who do.
Manager
Management issues center around the manager’s leadership style, communication, feedback and recognition, and prioritization.
Out are the hierarchical approaches in favor of flatter structures. This requires a different way of leading. Inclusive leadership is a leadership style gaining popularity due to its ability to optimize brain performance. By creating a psychologically safe environment, employees are empowered to achieve well-being at work and perform well.
Communication is no longer a one-way dialogue between the organization and employees. Managers serve as important mediators, translating the organizational objectives to each individual’s job role. Modern employee surveys with strong analytical capabilities serve as employees’ collective voice back to the organization, explaining what works well and what might prevent employee performance and productivity.
Feedback and recognition are important parts of improving employee performance and productivity. The manager plays a big role in creating a safe environment for employees to give and receive constructive feedback and recognizing employees for performing in alignment with the culture.
Managers must help employees prioritize work responsibilities and ensure work-life balance, influencing the feeling of well-being under which employees can perform and be productive.
Employee
Employee-related issues concern the individual employee and include self-leadership, engagement and motivation, personal life, values, work experience, and mindset and attitude.
Strong self-leadership is essential in more agile and flatter organizations. Employees who can manage stress and keep their engagement and motivation high can maximize their daily performance.
Everyone goes through ups and downs in their personal lives, and organizations must allow employees to manage their personal lives as they fit them. Forcing or setting unrealistic expectations on ways of working more often harms employee performance and productivity.
A person’s values and perception of reality influence their level of resistance to change. Their ability to adjust to new technologies or processes also impacts employee performance and productivity.
Work experience and skills affect the quality of employee performance and productivity. A less experienced employee views their work differently than someone who has more work experience, impacting what they focus on and how they perform their work. Providing training and development opportunities can significantly help.
How can employee performance and productivity be improved?
Employee performance and productivity can be improved in many ways. The key is knowing what to change or what areas to support to improve employee performance and increase productivity. A modern employee survey is very useful for learning this. Listening to employees who perform the daily responsibilities lets you understand current challenges and opportunities and what works well and can be used as best practices. Employee performance and productivity improvements are commonly addressed based on organizational, management, and employee-related issues and require different solutions.
Organization
Organizational issues involve the organizational culture, work environment, vision and strategy, processes, and career development.
When conducive to employee performance, organizational culture can serve as a competitive advantage. Building an organizational culture centered around social belonging is especially important for employee performance.
The work environment is another important area to ensure it supports employee performance. It includes both the physical and the psychological environment employees experience. Examples include providing an ergonomic workstation, enough time to perform tasks, options to work remotely, and the feeling of being able to safely express opinions without fear of being reprimanded or losing advancement opportunities.
A clear and compelling vision and an effective strategy allow employees to understand what the organization aims to achieve. Together with their manager, the employee can back-track the organizational objectives to their own contributions and increase the likelihood that their performance leads to success. When employees do not know or understand the vision and strategy, senior management must clarify them.
Outdated processes can hold employee performance and productivity back. Organizations must adopt a continuous improvement mindset where processes are continuously evaluated and updated.
A lack of career development can slow employee performance and productivity. While some people do not want extensive career development, organizations must provide options for those who do.
Manager
Management issues center around the manager’s leadership style, communication, feedback and recognition, and prioritization.
Out are the hierarchical approaches in favor of flatter structures. This requires a different way of leading. Inclusive leadership is a leadership style gaining popularity due to its ability to optimize brain performance. By creating a psychologically safe environment, employees are empowered to achieve well-being at work and perform well.
Communication is no longer a one-way dialogue between the organization and employees. Managers serve as important mediators, translating the organizational objectives to each individual’s job role. Modern employee surveys with strong analytical capabilities serve as employees’ collective voice back to the organization, explaining what works well and what might prevent employee performance and productivity.
Feedback and recognition are important parts of improving employee performance and productivity. The manager plays a big role in creating a safe environment for employees to give and receive constructive feedback and recognizing employees for performing in alignment with the culture.
Managers must help employees prioritize work responsibilities and ensure work-life balance, influencing the feeling of well-being under which employees can perform and be productive.
Employee
Employee-related issues concern the individual employee and include self-leadership, engagement and motivation, personal life, values, work experience, and mindset and attitude.
Strong self-leadership is essential in more agile and flatter organizations. Employees who can manage stress and keep their engagement and motivation high can maximize their daily performance.
Everyone goes through ups and downs in their personal lives, and organizations must allow employees to manage their personal lives as they fit them. Forcing or setting unrealistic expectations on ways of working more often harms employee performance and productivity.
A person’s values and perception of reality influence their level of resistance to change. Their ability to adjust to new technologies or processes also impacts employee performance and productivity.
Work experience and skills affect the quality of employee performance and productivity. A less experienced employee views their work differently than someone who has more work experience, impacting what they focus on and how they perform their work. Providing training and development opportunities can significantly help.