Trisha Bennett, Communications Director reveals one of the classic questions in organisations is ‘What makes a high performing organisation?
But, it’s ‘How?’ and ‘What are they competing on, that differentiates them and makes them a recognised high performer?’
Much research has been completed, theories established and books written on this topic. The common thinking in these writings is based on having a great understanding of your organisation. This is precisely the starting point for the Hospitality Assured Standard (Step 1 of the 9 Steps). Once you have a clear picture of your organisation then the Hospitality Assured Standard provides an excellent framework on how an organisation uses its resources to grow the business and increase profitability. It’s not prescriptive it’s about translating the framework into your business model and taking you on a journey to excellence and a high performing organisation. Hospitality Assured is about ‘helping organisations achieve competitive advantage through business and service excellence’, our customer service promise. We are passionate about it because we know it works as evidenced by our clients.
How do we recognise a high performing organisation? Well it’s very tangible. You can feel it, see it and hear it; there is an air of confidence, a buzz. People know what they are doing; they are efficient, resourceful, and demonstrate excellent customer service skills. This is not an easy thing to do in a digital business world where change is the only constant. Creating a competitive advantage is more than just the strategy, it’s about mobilising a high performing organisation that can adapt to the changing world. Organisations often have good practices and resources in place, but do not recognise that creating a competitive advantage is about understanding how to measure these and implement improvement tools effectively.
It would be worth considering the following in your organisation:
Leadership in today’s world is no longer about top down hierarchies. Strong leaders at the top are vital but high performing organisations need to create effective leadership at every level within the business. Everyone should possess leadership competencies by being up to the job, having a positive work attitude, being accountable, being totally committed to what your business is trying to achieve and making a real difference to performance and results. The skill of the top leadership is to inspire and give direction through effectively communicating the strategy and ensuring managers have the skills to translate the strategy, engage their teams and set challenging performance objectives. Recruiting the right people, developing and retaining them is vital. A focus on talent management, training and development, collaboration with all stakeholders and rewarding employees for being innovative and going the extra mile will help engagement and development of an agile culture.
Clear strategy that clarifies future direction and is communicated and reinforced will help create a united approach. Structured customer, competitor and marketplace research will help to inform a dynamic strategy, differentiating the business from the competition. Operational teams should be engaged in this process and discussions about the enablers and barriers to high performance in their area/department. This will help to build a sense of shared purpose and line of sight, a key driver for employee alignment. Establishing a lean structure enabling effective decision making, communication, and clearly defined roles and accountabilities will aid collaboration.
People are your most important asset, but do they know it? Do they feel recognised and rewarded? What is your employee value proposition? Could it be a competitive advantage? Establishing a people strategy is fundamental. This goes beyond pay and includes a broad range of benefits including career advancement, job rotation, status, flexibility and autonomy. Critical roles, including specialists – not necessarily leaders, need to be managed carefully with retention strategies and contingency plans in place. New equipment and systems that employees can take ownership of will help professional and personal development. Developing a learning culture will encourage an improvement mindset and an ability to adapt to change.
Performance Management helps employees to connect to the business. It is critical to establish clear outcomes and measures for success that will determine the success of the business strategy. Performance management should be a continuous formal and informal feedback process both for teams and individuals. What we mean by high performance, including key performance indicators and targets, needs to be clearly understood especially for customer satisfaction. Measurable objectives need to be agreed with individuals so they can clearly see how they are contributing to the success of the organisation and meet their future career aspirations. A simple balanced scorecard approach that translates strategic into individual objectives could be useful. Poor performance needs to be nipped in the bud and managed effectively so not to impact on the team.
Continuous improvement is the final point. High performing organisations no matter how positive the results, never stop trying to continuously improve. They are almost obsessive about measuring and benchmarking their performance so that they have the necessary information for improvement decisions. Every opportunity is explored including entering awards, developing partnerships, membership of industry and professional bodies and visiting exhibitions and competitors. They learn from this and have strong change management capabilities and embrace new ways of working.
Winning organisations have high-performance cultures that engage and inspire their employees, aligning all functions to support a win-win strategy for all. Complacency is not on the agenda!!
To find out how Hospitality Assured works with organisations to improve their business performance, click here
About the Author: Trisha Bennett
Trisha, Director of Hospitality Assured, has extensive experience in general management, marketing, research and education, and in 1988 founded a successful business consultancy that focuses on improving the performance of people and businesses. She is enthusiastic about learning and development, and believes in delivering service excellence through coaching, training and development interventions.
