Workplace Productivity Leadership

Workplace Productivity Leadership
www.highertalent.ca

“C-suite executives and benefit managers cite managing costs
and maintaining employee productivity as the most important
goals in both the short [2015-2016] and the
long term [2015-2020].”
© All Rights Reserved, Higher Talent Inc.
www.highertalent.ca

Higher Talent Inc.
• Susan Power, MBA, CHRP
Owner & CEO of Higher Talent Inc.
• 15+ years of HR experience
working with clients across industry
and sector
• Growing rapidly, network of HR
Consultants across Canada
Our vision is to build compelling cultures that inspire trust and
productivity in the workplace.
www.highertalent.ca

Our Core Capabilities
• Comprehensive Full-Suite of HR Services
 Payroll
 Benefits Administration
 Recruitment & Retention
 HR Advisory
• Workplace Productivity Assessments & Plans
• HR Training
• HR Policy Writing & Implementation
• Organizational Design, Job Analysis, & Compensation Plans
• HR Program Design & Implementation
www.highertalent.ca

Learning Objectives
1. Share key findings on productivity drivers
2. Discuss actions for increasing workplace
productivity across your entire organization
www.highertalent.ca

“A highly engaged workforce is 50% more productive than
an unengaged workforce and displays retention rates that
are 44% higher.”
www.highertalent.ca
Source: Weir, J. HR.com. 2003. Reporting findings of First, Break All the Rules, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt
Coffman (Simon and Schuster, 1999) and Now, Discover Your Strengths, by Marcus Buckingham and Donald
Clifton (The Free Press, 2001).

Impact of Productivity on the Bottom Line
www.highertalent.ca

Top Productivity Drivers
Compensation and
Incentives Employee Engagement
Performance Feedback
and Employee
Accountability
HR Programs and
Practices
Management –
Leadership Skills and
Style
Organizational Culture
HR Policies
Professional
Development
Opportunities
Workplace Wellness &
Health Promotion
www.highertalent.ca

Top Productivity Drivers
© All Rights Reserved, Higher Talent Inc.www.highertalent.ca
Physical Environment
and Ergonomics
Technology, Tools, and
Resources
Organizational
Structure
Communication,
Collaboration, and
Information Sharing
Employee Leadership,
Autonomy, and
Innovation
Employee Motivation

www.highertalent.ca
DO YOU HAVE A CULTURE BUILDING
PROGRAM IN PLACE?

Focus on culture building….
Only 12% of organizations have culture-building
programs in place.
www.highertalent.ca

“I came to see
in my time at
IBM, that
culture isn’t just
one aspect of
the game; it is
the game”
-- Former Chairman of IBM,
Lou Gerstner

Focus on culture building….
Only 12% of organizations have culture-building
programs in place.
www.highertalent.ca
Who we are
what we
value
High
aspirations
and a desire
to win
External
focus
Think like
owners
Bias to
action
Individuals
who team
Passion
and
energy
High Performance
values and
behaviours
Unique personality
and brand
WINNING CULTURES COMBINE TWO KEY ELEMENTS
Source: Bain & Company, 2006: Building a Winning Culture

www.highertalent.ca
Ask your people…
1. If we had the kind of culture
we aspire to, what kinds of new
behaviours would be common?
2. And what ingrained behaviours
would be gone?

Culture Transformation
www.highertalent.ca
• Struggling due to M&A’s that were not a culture fit.
• Talked to front-line employees that showed disconnect that
focus was too heavy on reducing claim costs to detriment of
patient care.
• Identified cultural issue, and then identified historical cultural
strengths, and rebuilt the strategy around those strengths.
• By mid-2000’s went from $300M loss to $1.7 billion gain.
“A strategy that is at odds with a company’s culture is doomed.
Culture trumps strategy every time.” -- CEO, Aetna

www.highertalent.ca
Start All Your Meetings On Time
Source: Cameron Herold’s High Growth Mastermind Group.

1. Hire motivated, ownership mentality people.
2. Talk to front line employees to understand root cause of culture disconnects
3. Simplify work processes and decrease stress
4. Use smaller, agile teams (functional and cross functional)
5. Get to know your people as individuals, in addition to the jobs they do
6. Hire leaders that “walk the talk” and roll up their sleeves to get the job
done.
www.highertalent.ca
Tips for Transforming Culture

Huge Engagement &
Productivity Driver
• Provide more
autonomy and self
dependence to your
people with
technical skills.
• People want to be
empowered to
make changes to
work processes to
improve their own
performance.

UNRELENTING
FOCUS ON CORE
CAPABILITIES
• Consider
outsourcing non
core support
functions such as
HR, IT, Accounting

Productivity Killers
www.highertalent.ca
WARNING SIGNS:
• Co-workers lack of productivity / follow-through.
• Negative communication, or no communication.
• Inconsistency in policy adoption.
• One or more toxic leaders.
• High absenteeism rate.
• High turnover rate.

“Hawthorne Effect”
Management
attention increases
productivity.
Hawthorne Works, a Western
Electric Factory outside of
Chicago, Illinois
1924-1932

Performance Feedback & Accountability
www.highertalent.ca
PEOPLE WANT THEIR EFFORTS RECOGNIZED
Employees who received predominantly positive feedback are
30 times more likely to be engaged than employees whose
performance is ignored.
Employee who received predominantly negative feedback are
actually 20 times more likely to be engaged than employees who are
ignored.

Management’s Leadership Skills & Style
www.highertalent.ca
RELATIONSHIPS AT WORK
Relations with Management
“I have trust and confidence in my supervisor.
“Managers/supervisors/team leaders work well with employees of
different backgrounds.”
“I have a high level of respect for my organization’s senior leaders.”
Relations with Peers
“The people I work with cooperate to get the job done”
“Employees in my work unit share job knowledge with each other.”

Management’s Leadership Skills & Style
RELATIONSHIPS AT WORK
Participative, Management Style
“I feel encouraged to come up with
new and better ways of doing
things”
“Employees have a feeling of
personal empowerment with
respect to work processes.”

“Organizations with effective leadership have
more than 2 x the number of engaged
employees than those without effective
leadership.”
Research: Survey: 15 Countries, 28,810 Employees, Broad Sectors
Source: How Leaders Drive Workforce Performance. Right Management.
https://hashdoc.com/documents/3223/how-leaders-dirve-workforce-performance.

Employee engagement
has highest positive
correlation with leaders
skilled at building
organized and efficient
workflow processes, and
assessing appropriate
staff workloads.
Do you train your leaders
on workflow planning?

1. Talk to front line employees to understand root cause of disconnects
5. Hire leaders that “walk the talk” and roll up their sleeves to get the job done.
www.highertalent.ca
Development Opportunities
1. What competency gaps exist within the organization?
2. Is there a organizational development plan to fill gaps?
3. What are the career paths for each position?
Source: 2015: Tiny Pulse Research of over 400,000 organizations

www.highertalent.ca
Development Opportunities
London, Ontario based company that
matches voice talent with customers
Ask Employees What Topics They Want More Information/Training on:
• Company and regulatory policies,
• how to master Salesforce (CRM system)
• How to make most of employee benefit packages
• Using internal processes and procedures
Resulted in EE Engagement, &
opportunity to action development
items from performance reviews
TRAINING TUESDAYS

HR Policy is a Key
Productivity Driver.
• Embed Brand &
Culture into HR
Policies.
• Unlimited Vacation?

www.highertalent.ca
Productivity by Country
Country Avg. Vacation Days Productivity
per Hour
Austria 35 $54.83 / hr
Germany 34 $57.36 / hr
France 31 $59.24 / hr
Belgium 30 $60.98 / hr
Norway 25 $75.18 / hr
Canada 26 $50.29 / hr
United States 13 $67.32 / hr
Harvard Business Review Study
Spending less time at your desk, forces you
to get things done faster, more efficiently.
Did NOT suggest more vacation results in
less stress

Workplace Wellness & Health Promotion
CORNELL UNIVERSITY ERGONOMICS RESEARCH
LABORATORY
• conducted a 10-week study at New Century Global
with a computer program that reminded workers
to keep good posture and take short breaks.
• Workers receiving the alerts were 13 percent more
accurate on average in their work than coworkers
who were not reminded.

Sweden is
presently piloting 6
hour work days.
Numerous studies show
that productivity turns
sharply negative as we
move beyond 40 hour
work weeks.

www.highertalent.ca
Questions / Comments
SUSAN POWER, MBA, CHRP
Owner & CEO
709-739-1953
susanpower@highertalent.ca
www.highertalent.ca
HigherTalent_HR Higher Talent Inc.
Our national network of HR Consultants are ready to add value to you business.
Building compelling cultures that
inspire trust and productivity in the
workplace

Workplace Productivity Leadership

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