Improving organisational and employee performance is a key focus for everybody right now. Whether it’s a priority for your organisation because of distributed remote teams, quiet quitting concerns, reduced resources, a downsized workforce or simply to maximise your organisation to reach its full potential – you’re not alone in this endeavour. However, what can feel lonely is spearheading these core company improvements without buy-in, support, guidance or the knowledge to make it sustainable past initial adoption. Boosting your company’s productivity through organisational performance consulting can be an essential part of your strategy to help your company meet its objectives. Expert consultants help organisations identify and solve challenges by using the right tools, methods, and solutions. Certainly, an organisational performance consultancy can support with performance challenges, but they also lay the groundwork for many other benefits and positive byproducts; such as a healthier culture, more engaged workforce, honest communication, change management and many others. Let’s dive into the benefits of working with an organisational performance consultancy. But first, a recap before we get into the action.
What is organisational performance?
An organisation’s performance is measured as its actual output versus its intended output (or goals and objectives). Today, organisational performance refers to a company’s ability to maintain goals in the face of constant change.
OKRs (Objectives and key results):
OKRs are an agile approach to motivating and managing performance in line with business strategy. Setting OKRs is a powerful way to communicate what you want to achieve and the milestones you’ll need to meet to get there. Several of the world’s leading organisations use OKRs to set and implement their strategies, including the likes of Google, Amazon, Microsoft and other giants in their respective industry.
KPIs (Key performance indicators):
KPIs are used to measure performance but don’t tell you what needs to change or improve to drive the growth of those numbers. KPIs are generally used for business measurement activities, things like revenue, active users, or uptime of a service. You can take a read of our handy cheatsheet for a quick overview of the differences between KPIs and OKRs.
Values & behaviours:
Workplace values define who you are and what you stand for. Having them clarified helps your team deliver on your promises to customers. As part of your Employee Value Proposition, you must deliver an authentic employee experience, which is infused with your brand’s values and behaviours. These values might include always using initiative, eagerness to learn, being accountable, or working well with others. Once defined and communicated, workplace values drive the attitudes and behaviours you see within your team.
1.Improve organisational performance as a whole
There’s greater commitment among CEOs around the world to improve the performance of their organisations, regardless of their size or industry. Organisational improvements are an ongoing process, and each organisation has its own specific needs. So while we always encourage everybody from CEOs to HR to do their research beforehand on other organisations performance – a performance consultant’s true value comes in creating a totally customised solution for you. Insufficient resources, unrealistic expectations, misalignment or unmanageable bureaucracy are rarely acknowledged as the culprits of performance problems. Do you know the challenges each department, team or seniority level are facing in your company? We have observed that performance problems are generally caused by a host of issues, which invariably have a connection – from KPIs expecting the world of an employee, to values being just a section on your ‘About Us’ page. For long-term performance improvement, you must address the key issues in relation to one another. For an organisational performance consultancy, this is just the start of their value. Read on to find out just how advantageous working with one might be.
2. Can support you to define your values
A culture that values performance is key to excellent long-term performance. It is not easy to establish such a culture, but it is not impossible either with the help of an organisational performance consultancy. First of all, making your company values clear at all stages of employment is essential for creating a positive working relationship between you and your employees. The more your employees feel their work directly contributes to your company objectives – as well as their own personal values – the more likely they are to perform well. Sounds simple right? Let’s take one of There Be Giant’s core values, for example, ‘Strive to be better. We will want to celebrate a team member for their continuous innovation and dedication to improving what we do and how we do it to benefit the whole company. There is, however, more to the story than just having values and a sense of purpose. Employees must be aware of the relationship between their job and the mission of the organisation. Does your organisation make decisions based on its values? If not, experienced organisational performance consultants can help you define what values and behaviours you should strive to implement, demonstrate and reward to ensure your goals are met time and time again. Organisational performance consultants can loop a golden thread between your business decisions and the values of your organisation that will ultimately result in highly motivated and engaged employees. It is easier for employees to stay engaged when they have clear goals to aim for.
3. Retain better talent and culture-fit employees
While attracting top performers can be difficult, retaining them is equally challenging. Not to mention the financial impact of turnover is undeniable and the process of recruiting and onboarding is time-consuming (and costly!) Employee engagement has become somewhat of an HR buzzword in recent years, and most organisations are striving to increase workers’ performance, motivation, and engagement. The definition of employee engagement is the emotional commitment an employee has to their organisation and goals. In many cases, it is synonymous with productivity and motivation. Establishing KPIs and OKRs together and discussing how their responsibilities directly impact the wider business goals is an easy way to ensure engagement from the start. With a performance consultant by your side, you can help each individual better understand their role within your organisation’s mission; and they’ll be more motivated to help you succeed. You cannot reach new heights if your employees don’t care. Their likelihood of leaving also closely correlates with employee engagement. Your workforce’s willingness to work hard, put forth the necessary effort, and achieve the company’s goals can be directly influenced by a positive employee experience. This includes any ambitious OKRs you’ve set together!
How to retain your top employees
4. Creates better alignment
Clear goals make it easier for employees to be engaged in their daily tasks. In addition to motivating and inspiring employees, these ambitious goals increase engagement and align the team. The potential for OKRs to work together with KPIs is huge, so if you haven’t yet implemented them, you should. KPIs help monitor performance and identify areas for improvement; OKRs help solve problems, improve processes, and drive innovation.
At There Be Giants, our goal as organisational performance consultants is to help your businesses grow by implementing OKRs that will have the greatest impact, bolstering them with realistic KPIs and fostering a culture that not only embraces change, but pioneers transformation. With our expert consultants that guide you through the OKR process, we implement our proprietary methodology to ensure that your business maintains momentum while achieving ambitious goals. Our approach is all about helping you to crystallise your priorities, enabling your employees to align with them and drive your business growth. There are numerous advantages to applying this framework, and businesses of all sizes can experience using OKRs to achieve corporate goals with focus and alignment. Some of these benefits include:
- Agility
- Employee engagement
- Clear objectives and goals
- Greater transparency
- Improved retention
- Reduced silos
Keep in mind that it’s not only a top-down process. The process permits everyone to participate in setting goals and take greater responsibility for their own – which is not an easy feat without a facilitator or third party to offer unbiased support and guidance. Organisational performance consultants at There Be Giants advise your leaders on how to cultivate a culture where OKRs can thrive, identify your strategic priorities and map these cross-functionally against your organisation. Crafting impactful OKRs that motivate, align and bring purpose to your teams.
5. Embed a culture of feedback and recognition
There are many ways to foster innovation and increase employee performance, but perhaps the most important is establishing a culture of feedback and recognition. Getting your employees’ feedback on what can be done differently is the first step – you might need to build psychological safety with your teams beforehand, which is something an organisational performance consultancy can support with.
Feedback goes both ways and providing continuous feedback allows your staff to stay on top of their goals and objectives, as well as get a jump start on making the improvements that might be holding them back. Creating a growth culture requires continuous feedback, pivoting when necessary, and most importantly, adapting and improving constantly. An organisational performance consult can help you set the right cadence for feedback, making it more informative and effective for everyone.
6. Opens a gateway for honest communication with psychological safety
Psychological safety at work is essential to the productivity, motivation, and inspiration of your teams. Not only is it a basic human need, but it will also support employee loyalty. If someone doesn’t feel safe, welcome, included or valued in your company culture, then most likely others don’t either. In any workplace, psychological safety often goes hand in hand with company culture. If your company culture is up-to-scratch, research shows it could boost productivity by 56% and reduce employee turnover by 50%. No business would embark on an ambitious strategic business growth plan without research, data and discussion to shape and form it, and the same applies to shifting or growing your culture.Organisational performance consults assist you to engage your people, gather some feedback and data, listen, discuss and respond. It isn’t always the easiest work, especially if you’re too close to the everyday, but it’s worth it. With an unbiased third party, employees might feel more inclined to give honest feedback. By fostering a culture of open communication and valuing diverse perspectives, teams can create an environment where healthy conflict and risk-taking are encouraged and everyone feels heard and valued. It can be challenging to know where to start. Organisational performance consultants are well-versed in helping you break down barriers, and create a psychologically safe work environment that encourages team members to unlock their unique and innovative contributions, ultimately leading to business success.
Getting started with a psychologically safe workplace
7. Builds a more inclusive organisational culture
In the end, business is all about people, who bring unique experiences, skills, perspectives, and stories to the table. Culture cannot be taught. That’s the long and short of it. It cannot be learned or developed as a technical skill. Nonetheless, organisational performance consultancies can assist you in creating the culture you want and in doing so, leverage the energy, focus, and commitment of your diverse workforce. We love to use and teach a Team Inclusion Practice on our OKR Coach programme which is a quick and effective way to ensure inclusivity gets the practical, proactive focus it needs. It’s a really simple form of workplace culture training that can be run in a number of ways. Sessions can be carried out both in-person and online to ensure each person is offered the opportunity to speak, be acknowledged and be heard.
It enables people to say how they are feeling in the moment (whatever they may be feeling) and to acknowledge any distractions they may have. The ability to shift a person’s mindset and behaviour can happen within seconds, but creating real, genuine and effective culture change in an organisation takes time, persistence, and focus. Organisational performance consults are equipped with the knowledge to ensure your values and behaviours can be communicated clearly across the organisation.
8. Better motivation across the team
When it comes to recognising exceptional employees who go above and beyond, it’s definitely worth looking into to avoid unmotivated employees. A performance culture is about defining what you might already believe is known to your organisation and turning it into actionable, tangible goals. For organisational performance consultants, this is their bread and butter. In the past few years, your organisation has most likely experienced some pretty serious changes – whether through growth or survival. Taking the time to redefine your company’s future and what path you’ll take to get there is key. A company with a strong and positive company culture survives and thrives because employees are aware of their expectations and the company’s goals, regardless of where they work. Put simply, an engaged culture marked by high levels of involvement, consistency, adaptability, and a transparent mission improves sales and customer satisfaction. In fact, OKRs are amongst the most widely-used and effective professional development tools. Employees are 3.6x more likely to be engaged if their manager involves them in goal setting for performance management purposes. The result is increased productivity and lower employee turnover, so you can improve your organisation’s overall performance by developing a more skilled and capable workforce. Organisational performance consults can help you define the most impactful goals for the business right now, allowing employees to remain focused, yet motivated by the prospect.
9. Unlock cross-functional working and eliminate silos
The success of your business is dependent upon finding solutions to challenges and redirecting resources where they are needed. Especially in remote work environments, OKRs are perfect for keeping cross-functional teams focused, aligned, and on track toward results. Ask yourself, is there anything you could be doing to increase agility in your organisation? It’s not always as obvious from the inside. An organisational performance consultant is candid in their observations, and offers solutions that can start to eliminate silos and allow better collaboration across teams. The full benefits of OKRs can only be realised with a scalable approach, which includes expertise to master the methodology, technology to show alignment, risks, and progress, and coaching to guide quarterly improvements within the organisation. The best part? You can quickly adapt to change with agile OKR strategies. When operating in uncertain conditions, that’s one of the most important factors. By using agile methods such as sprints and scrums, agile OKRs help to build a holistic goal strategy. As a trademark of agile organisations, human-centric culture promotes better operational performance and increases employee engagement.
10. Support with change management
OKRs can be a huge change for many, so it’s important to get the implementation strategy right. Piloting is a good way to test the waters before you dive into full implementation – and ultimately, it’s these details that build buy-in. Implementing the right OKRs ensure that your business maintains momentum while achieving ambitious goals. Organisational performance or OKR consultants can provide objective guidance on change management and advise on how to successfully deliver change, as well as help you get buy-in into the process. OKRs are a transformative way to do something new, make a change, or see a step change improvement; but asking people to do something new is difficult. Good change delivery is a vital part of a successful OKR project. It helps teams easily transition through something new, and provides them with the resources to flourish. At There Be Giants, our OKR training equips learners with the technical knowledge and soft skills needed to work with OKRs in a real-life setting An organisational performance consultancy can ensure longevity and momentum of the OKR methodology in your organisation. A big focus for us is giving the right OKR training improve business leaders, managers and C-Suite’s confidence in the OKR process – as well as giving them the tools to motivate and support their teams when implementing OKRs. To make a roll-out successful, all team members must be pulling in the same direction. Therefore, your team’s leaders should have the knowledge and skills necessary to keep them on track to reach their OKRs.
11. Gives you valuable time and resource back
We know from our years of experience in the space that a huge consideration is comparing the cost and time of implementing key organisational changes by yourself versus working with experts in their field. We encounter this a lot when talking to clients about goal setting, OKRs and general organisational performance challenges. Would the time gained back be better spent on strategic initiatives that will advance the business? Right now, can you afford to waste resources? At There Be Giants, the implementation and up-skilling of employees are done in a time and cost-effective way. The investment is also guaranteed to pay dividends in the end. Defining OKRs will help the leadership teams become more focused and improve their decision-making based on outcomes, not gut instincts.
12. Transfer of competence
At There Be Giants, because we get teams trained up during the OKR implementation and roll-out, once we leave, their teams are empowered and self-sufficient in their use of OKRs. This transfer of competence is key to our methodology – we want to ensure your organisational performance is sustainable. Our OKR methodology is driven by outcomes. So, whether you’re looking to increase revenue, visibility, engagement or performance, our organisational performance experts work with you to create bespoke goals. Every organisation is different with its own processes, structures and ways of working. This is why all of our OKR implementation packages are bespoke to each organisation we work with. If you could benefit from the help of an organisational performance expert, get in touch to discuss your requirements, our friendly team would be happy to chat.
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