Introduction
The goal of every business organisation is to maximise profit making. The maximisation of profit is directly related to high employees’ working performance in the work place. Therefore, organisational leaders and business managers should put in place measures that would encourage high working performance. According to the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, “High Performance Working (HPW) is defined as a general approach to managing organisations that aims to stimulate more effective employee involvement and commitment in order to achieve high levels of performance.
They are designed to enhance the discretionary effort that employees put into their work and to fully utilise the skills that they possess” (Belt & Giles, 2009, p.72). The high performance of businesses coupled with the quick growth of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) has a positive impact on economic growth and development of any given economy, and thus the United Kingdom has legislated laws that are designed to improve the employees’ high working performance. The legislations are an addition policy to industrial relations policy that focuses on the good relationship between employees and their employers.
High Performance Working
HPW refers to implementation of policies that are meant to help employers meet the employees’ wellbeing in an organisation. Employees give their best to the wellbeing of an organisation when they feel appreciated and protected by their employer. Hence, HPW strategy offers guidelines to employers on how they should address the needs of their employees in order to achieve a high-performance working organisation. High performance working organisation is achieved only when employees are satisfied with the prevailing working conditions.
Components of High Performance Working Organisation
Three main factors determine the effectiveness of HPW, which include leadership, management, and organisational culture. The effectiveness of HPW relies heavily on these three components as they have a direct impact on employees’ affairs. Although HPW emphasises on the employees’ wellbeing at the workplace, studies have shown that its effectives relies on the suitability of leadership, management, and organisational culture to offer suitable working environment to employees. This aspect implies that an organisation cannot improve its performance if it adopts HPW strategy, while at the same time retaining the old order of leadership, management, and the organisation’s cultural structures that hitherto hindered high performance.
Leadership is the most important factor that determines the success of business organisations in the contemporary world. Every capitalist nation in the modern world has enlightened citizens, who can challenge unfair authorities boldly. Hence, leaders are aware that their followers keep a close watch to the practised leadership strategies. The leadership style exercised in an organisation determines whether employees’ rights are prioritised or neglected coupled with ascertaining whether employees feel free to use their talents or the authorities limit the extent of such freedom. Various forms of leadership styles exist and each has unique impact on the effectiveness of HPW in an organisation. Some of the most common leadership styles in the world of business include transformational, coaching, and authoritative leadership styles. Transformational leadership style is the best form of leadership in the business world. This form of leadership entails leading by guiding rather than ruling. A transformational leader gives room for the opinion of his or her followers and s/he plays an important role in advising with regard to the needs of the followers.
The majority of the world leading business organisations such as Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and Apple among others operates under transformational leaders, who play an important role in encouraging talent growth of the followers. Talent growth is achieved through ensuring that employees enjoy the work place and feel the need to put their individual’s talent and growth in use for the better performance of the organisation. Transformation leadership focuses more on the follower’s wellbeing, which then boosts the talent growth of the employees. In addition, this leadership style instils in the followers a sense of ownership through acknowledging individual’s contribution to the success of an organisation. Hence, transformation is a necessary ingredient for HPW strategy in a business organisation.
Coaching leadership style is also crucial for the effectiveness of HPW in a business organisation. This form of leadership style entails training followers for them to produce the desired results. Coaching leadership style is closely related to the transformational style, but the only difference is that in coaching leadership, a leader decides what he or she wants from the follower, whereas in transformational leadership, the leader takes what the follower has to offer.
However, coaching leadership limits the employees’ talent growth by determining what is expected by the organisation with regard to the employers’ demands. Organisations normally dictate what they want from their new recruits, but as the recruits are assimilated to the organisation, the demands seem to lessen to offer good environment for the talent growth and individuals’ development, but in coaching leadership, employees are expected to fit into the system as dictated by those in authority. Therefore, coaching leadership can either facilitate or hinder the effectiveness of HPW in an organisation depending on the leadership qualities of the leaders.
Authoritative form of leadership is a form of leadership whereby leaders dictate what their followers should offer to the organisation with less care to the employees’ opinions on the wellbeing of the organisation. This form of leadership limits the employees’ contribution to the success of an organisation for they do not always participate in the decision-making processes. The majority of private institutions do not allow their employees to participate in the decision-making processes, and thus the HPW could only work effectively after a change in the leadership style.
The second important factor of effectiveness of HPW is the management system in an organisation. The nature of the management system determines the effectiveness of HPW in an organisation for the management makes policies that govern the operations of an organisation. An effective management system ensures that business operations run smoothly and employees’ wellbeing is well taken care of by the managers. The ultimate goal of an effective management system is to implement policies that would bring-forth good working environment to employees in order to enhance business performance, and thus it addresses the same need as the HPW strategy. In addition, an effective management system also advocates for transformational leadership style in an organisation, which allows talent growth amongst employees while working in an organisation.
In addition, it is important to understand that employees form part of an organisation’s stakeholders, just like the communities around the business premises. From outside the business premises, one can understand the nature of management by looking at the business participation in social-corporate affairs. Hence, the businesses that address the needs of the communities around them are likely to have effective management system, which can effectively implement the HPW strategy within the business policies. Therefore, the effectiveness of HPW depends solely on the nature of the management system and its ability to address the social needs of other people, who form an integral part of the business.
The third factor that determines the effectiveness of HPW is the organisational culture. Organisational culture is defined as the nature of the governing authority system in an organisation from the top management to the lowest personnel. It forms an important component of the HPW as different organisations have different organisational cultures. HPW addresses the needs of the employees’ wellbeing, which depend on the nature of the prevalent organisational culture.
The nature of an organisational culture determines the ability of an organisation to address the needs of its employees and in many ways the ability to adhere to the rules of industrial relations. Industrial relations refer to the nature of communication channels in an organisation, through which employees raise their grievances to their bosses within the workplace. Hence, the effectiveness of industrial relation policies relies heavily on the nature of the organisational culture, which is also the outline of the communication channel within an organisation. Industrial relations have close relationship with the HPW strategy in the sense that the latter forms part of the employees’ wellbeing. Hence, HPW also addresses the effectiveness of the industrial relationships as part of its components.
However, HPW has various components, which include safety and insurance, remunerations, annual leaves, industrial relations, number of working hours, and the working environment among others. On safety and insurance, HPW demands employers to ensure that the working environment meets safety requirements that depend solely on the nature of the working environment. Employees should be protected from any form of reducible and avoidable risks according to the international business law, but a majority of employers do not offer insurance packages to their employees. The HPW strategy demands employees to be covered against perils that would occur to them at the work place in order to protect them and their beneficiaries against financial risks in case of any form of personal accidents at the workplace.
The HPW strategy addresses the issue of salaries and remunerations as part of its components whereby employees should receive salaries that match their input to the organisation’s success. However, this requirement has turned out to be a debatable component across the world, due to variations in salaries and remunerations paid to employees across different economies in the world. Employers often use the advantage of the available excess demand for labour to pay inadequate salaries and remunerations to their employees. However, the HPW strategy demands that employers should pay salaries that are considerable to the employees’ input. In addition, remunerations should be paid to workers whenever they work overtime hours according to the international industrial relations regulation policies. Effective implementation of the HPW strategy should address employees’ wellbeing as far as salaries and remunerations are concerned for employees’ work for money as top of their benefits and other needs follow, hence employers should always have this concept in mind.
The HPW strategy demands that employees should be entitled to remunerable annual leaves. HPW addresses the needs of employees by taking them as equal to their employers in a personal capacity, and thus the former have the right to relax and get time for their personal affairs, which should come from annual leaves and other day offs within a one-year period. According to the HPW strategy, effective leaders understand the needs of their followers and they do their best to address them with the respect they deserve. Hence, the HPW strategy demands that employees should get time to addresses their personal needs and in cases where it is impossible to allow for leaves, the employer is entitled to pay for the spent overtime hours.
Industrial relations form a crucial component of the HPW strategy due to the need of the communication channels through which employees can use to address their bosses for anything concerning their grievances. HPW calls for communication channels that would minimise the time that employees would take to reach to the top management whenever they have issues that demand to be addressed by the top management. Traditionally, there was one way communication channel where only the top management could have addressed their juniors, but in the contemporary world, employees have a right to address the top management, and hence the communication channel need to be established and well known to the employees in order to have a good working environment. Studies have shown that the HPW strategy has played a major role in reducing cases of employee violence and protests in the workplace in many developed countries and a majority of developing nations seem to be following in the same footsteps.
The number of working hours is a crucial component of HPW that need to be well stated in the employment terms and conditions. Many developed countries demand that employees should not work for more than eight hours in a day in order to achieve high performance in an organisation. This idea was initiated with the psychological view that a person takes at most eight hours to give the best in a day, hence working past the eight hours threshold adds little value to the day’s work. In addition, beyond the eight hours threshold, a person shifts his or her thinking to personal attributes, thus losing concentration of the job at hand. Therefore, the employer should compensate any work done past eight hours a day.
The sixth component of HPW covers the working environment whereby employers are required to ensure that employees work under good working conditions to avoid distress and depression in extreme cases. Human beings are psychologically defined as social beings, and thus employers need to ensure that employees work in an environment that allows personal interactions. In addition, individual needs also should be well taken care of at the workplace in order to enhance good relationship and comfort to individuals. For instance, some employers encourage welfare programs that address individual needs of the affected persons in the workplace in the quest to show unity and support to those under distressing situations.
Impacts of HPW
The HPW has three main impacts on an organisation, which relate to an organisation’s performance, competitive advantage, and employees’ wellbeing. On organisation’s performance, an organisation that effectively addresses the needs of its employees stands a high chance of profit making due to the good working environment that workers enjoy. HPW ensures that an organisation taps employees’ talents, which serve a long way in ensuring that employees give their best, hence improving an organisation’s performance.
Competitive advantage is a crucial component of business survival strategy. HPW ensures that an organisation attains a competitive advantage for by retaining talented employees, an organisation is likely to develop innovative products that would outdo the competitors’ products in the market. Hence, addressing the employees’ wellbeing through HPW is a great step towards attaining a competitive advantage by an organisation. Finally, HPW helps an organisation to meet the employees’ welfare in the best way possible by giving out guidelines to the things that employers need to consider in order to address employees’ wellbeing effectively. Employees feel proud of working under good working conditions, where not only their needs are addressed, but also they feel appreciated by their employers. Consequently, successful meeting of employees’ wellbeing is achieved via exhaustive consideration of the components of the HPW strategy.
A Business Case on Autoglass Company
Autoglass is an automotive repair company that is rated as one of the leading companies in the automotive repair sector. It has over 2200 employees with its headquarters in Bedford and 109 subsidiaries across the country. The company relies heavily on insurance companies for vehicle repair services and individual customers. However, it operates autonomously, even though it is part of the Belron group of companies, which is the leading automotive repair group across Europe.
In 2008, the company dropped its profits after police campaigns that advised people not to leave valuable luggage in their cars across the UK due to increased car theft cases. The campaign lowered the number of glasswork that the company used to do annually. The company needed to implement quick measures that would pull it out of the situation. The HR thought it prudent to ensure employee engagement in the running of the company whereby employees would attend conferences and give opinions and suggestions about the business operations and measures that could be implemented.
In addition, the company implemented the HPW strategies that helped it to meet the employees’ wellbeing satisfactorily (Department of Labour, 2011). After the implementation of the HPW strategy, the company managed to recover from distress within a period of one year. In addition, the company managed to increase its competitive advantage through enhancing talent growth and retaining employees. In addition, the measures to implement employees’ wellbeing were put in place, which played a major role in improving the working environment. In addition, the company made the national employee engagement forum where employees needs are addressed. Today, Autoglass has one of the best working conditions for its employees.
Conclusion
Among the various ways of improving organisational performance, HPW seems to be the best option. The HPW strategy addresses all the issues that are necessary for the wellbeing of employees; hence, it stands out as the most suitable strategy for enhancing business and organisation performance. The strategy looks into the welfare of employees in a boarder capacity than other strategies such as the industrial relations as it calls for organisational culture and leadership style that prioritises the employees’ wellbeing. Effective utilisation of HPW strategy in an organisation adds great value to performance and working environmental conditions for employees. In addition, it helps in addressing the stakeholders’ welfare, as it is capable of dealing with the needs of communities near the business premises in order to create a sustainable environment for the employees.
References
Belt, V., & Giles, L. (2009). High Performance Working: A Synthesis of Key Literature, UK Commission for Employment and Skills. London, UK: Wath-on-Dearne.
Department of Labour: Skills Challenges Report: New Zealand’s Skills Challenges over the Next Ten Years. (2011). Wellington, NZ: Department of Labour.