August 2019

It Won’t!

And here is why:

Just because you double your workforce doesn’t mean you double your productivity. As bestselling author Jim Collins concluded in his book ‘GOOD to GREAT’ (why some companies make the leap and others don’t)…

“Great vision without great people is irrelevant.”

There is little benefit in having two hundred people operating at 40% efficiency when you can have one hundred people operating at 80% efficiency. Adding more people also means increased costs, in terms of recruitment, training and management overheads.

The key to higher profit margins, is having a high performing workforce.

So, How do you Develop a High Performing Workforce?

There is a gap between what the research reveals and what organisations are actually doing. It turns out following your passion really does deliver R.O.I.

Peer reviewed research, published in leading business psychology journals (Dr Shubhakr Gujula, Prof. Beena Chintalapuri*) proves a direct correlation between the level of enjoyment in the task of the job and the results employees achieve for the organisation.

Thirty years of research by Dr.Dan Harrison, demonstrates that employees who are congruent with their jobs and enjoy at least 75% of the tasks of the job, perform three times better than employees who don’t enjoy their job.

Example:

The key to high performing employees is to have high levels of competency and congruency between the natural passion of the employee and the tasks of the job. This is a critical driver for increased employee engagement and high performance.

How to Develop Your Employees for High Performance?

Because it can take between six to twelve months for the organisation to determine if an employee is an “A” player.

It is critical to conduct an audit from the outset as to whether or not a potential new employee has the DNA to become a high performer in your organisational culture.

The latest advances in behavioural science enable an employer to establish (before making a hiring decision) whether or not an employee has the DNA of a high performer.

This empowers the organisation to match the right people to the right jobs with a high degree of accuracy. Validity studies by organisations who have used this methodology, show correlation coefficient of up to 0.7 (high predictive power). The methodology is called Performance Benchmarking.

Performance Benchmarking

Performance Benchmarking provides a quantitative evaluation that differentiate high performers from average and low performers for a specific job.

The method uses A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) to formulate and measure critical behavioural traits for a job and show the impact they have on performance.

Example:

The example below highlights the critical success factors necessary for a Sales Manager in a Global Organisation.

A benchmark study was carried out to establish the essential traits for successful Sales Managers in a global organisation. The study found that sales managers with the following traits were consistently high performing:

When choosing which candidates from a selection process to take forward from a shortlist of five potential job candidates (Candidate A, B, C, D, E). The hiring manager then compares the shortlisted candidates to the organisations benchmark for high performance in a Sales Manager Role.

Candidate A Scores:

The above diagram shows the distribution score of a candidate who applied for the job.

This particular candidate has a strong alignment with the essential traits for a sales manager in this organisation.

In conclusion, the benefits include:

• Benchmarking matches critical job success factors with actual job performance, resulting in a highly scientific, objective and measurable outcome (up to 80% ability to predict success in a job).

• For internal ‘grow your own’ programmes the method provides data to improve job performance, by highlighting ‘performance gaps’ which determine where improvement is needed, managers can introduce laser-focused interventions which support employee development.

The result: Better selection and targeted development that leads to higher performing employees.

For further information on how people analytics can help you develop high performing employees, contact us here: sharon.miller@human-bydesign.com.

Thinking of expanding your business?

Then according to the latest research – your team may need to cultivate a ‘Growth Mindset’.

The work carried out by world-famous psychologist Dr. Carol Dwek on ‘Growth Mindset’ has gained much popularity in recent times.

According to Dweck there are two kinds of people, those with a ‘growth mindset’ and those with a ‘fixed mindset’. The former is underpinned by the belief that your abilities are fixed by your upbringing, genetics or intelligence.

“In a ‘growth mindset’ people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work, brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment” writes Dweck.

Our belief at Human-ByDesign is that results in organisations flow through people. When we apply the principles of ‘Growth Mind-Set’ to organisational culture and support our employees and teams to stretch their cognitive skills and emotional intelligence to new horizons, this, in turn, supports the organisation to also stretch beyond its capabilities to innovate, change and grow.

Here at Human-ByDesign we are interested in understanding how we can begin to harness the principles of growth mindset to build positive organisational culture. Our business is grounded in behavioural science and we are currently in the process of developing scientifically sound methodologies and tools to support organisations to develop a growth mindset.

In doing so, it will be important that our work is grounded not only in theory but also in the practical application of the methodologies.

We believe answering the following questions will help to provide clarity and shape a trajectory for that will have a beneficial outcome for the organisations that we will  serve:

• Why is creating an environment for growth mindset important when developing organisational culture?
• What behavioural attributes constitute a growth mindset?
• How do we know if we have a growth mindset or not?
• How can we measure growth mind-set, in our employees, teams and across organisational culture?
• How can we develop a reliable diagnostic tool that provides a behavioural mirror so that we can have visibility on precisely were our employees need to focus on development interventions?
• How can we develop a scientifically validated process, which provides us with a data – set that we can rely on and have confidence in to support us make the best decisions for recruitment and internal employee development programmes?

Before diving in to answer these questions, there is an additional piece of the puzzle that I believe is worth noting:

When we juxtapose Dr. Carol Dweck’s Research with Professor Dan Harrisons 30 years of research on *enjoyment theory, we can see that cultivating a growth mindset as part of organisational culture is not as straight forward as we might initially think.

According to Dr. Dan Harrison’s research, employees who are aligned with tasks of the job that they find intrinsically rewarding, tend to be three times more productive in their role.

His central thesis is human beings are designed to enjoy their work. Even when there is career progression in the organisation with ample opportunity for growth offered by the company, his research found that it is human nature to feel restless and seek to move on when we don’t experience ‘job satisfaction’.

The research on this suggests there is a balance to be struck between creating psychologically safe environments to support our employees stretch and grow, while at the same time being mindful to align our employees with work that allows them to be their authentic-self and engage in work they find meaningful, purposeful and intrinsically fulfilling.

Organisations can then tap into a much larger reservoir of creativity, energy and productivity from their employees, which will in turn lead to more mutually beneficial outcomes, for both the employee and the organisation.

To explore further how your organisation can cultivate a ‘Growth Mind-Set’ culture, get in touch with us by Clicking here.

Happiness, ah that elusive feeling, one moment it’s there and next, it’s gone.

Happiness can range from an immediate gratifying experience to satisfying long term meaningful objectives, goals or dreams.

The latest research in neuroscience and psychology tells us that Human’s are goal-seeking mechanisms, we are built to achieve and thrive, the more meaningful the goal we achieve the greater the fulfillment.

Why is Happiness important in work?

Our brain operates at the highest levels of functionality when we believe we are involved in work, that is meaningful to us.

Therefore our most satisfying ‘happiness’ experiences happen at work when we are achieving goals that are authentically aligned to our true selves.

The most important findings in the research are that Human’s have internal self-governing systems and are most disciplined in areas of work that they find intrinsically satisfying.

This self-governing capacity is the key to enhanced productivity and higher levels of performance in individuals and teams.

This essentially means that if the organization hires and retains individuals who are intrinsically aligned with the work tasks they are performing on a daily basis, and they derive job satisfaction from those tasks, the company will require very little additional resources to keep the team motivated and on track.

All supervision systems that a company employs to either ‘micro-manage’ employees or attempt to get them to focus on the task are simply compensation for the lack of alignment between the individual’s intrinsic motivational drivers and the tasks they are working on.

Not only does an intrinsic alignment with work tasks help engage the brain, but science has also proven that our autonomic nervous system comes into balance when we are engaged in activities we enjoy.

Since our nervous system is the master controller governor of our bodies, this system is built to give us rewards when we are ‘on track’ with intrinsically what is important to us and give us feedback i.e. negative emotions when we are ‘off track’ with what is important to us.

We have all had experienced where we are so in tune, so ‘present’ with our work, that we lose track of time. Perhaps it was an important project we were working on or a piece of work that was very meaningful to us.

This is true happiness, this is what psychologists call flow states and this state of happiness enables us to achieve the highest levels of productivity. Science tells us that we are neurologically wired to achieve flow states.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defines the flow state as:

“An optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best“. Which means that the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement and success in the process of the activity. It is a state of supreme creativity.”

So how do we know when we are in the flow and how to get into more flow?  

The HATS’ tool developed by professor Harrison is an objective measure of where the individual is aligned with the work tasks of the job. The tool is underpinned by ‘enjoyment theory’, the measure of how much an individual enjoys or is ‘in flow with’ the tasks of the job.

The result of numerous studies and 20 years of validation research has proven that were individuals are 70% or more aligned with work tasks they enjoy, they are more likely to be ‘in flow’ and less likely to need outside supervision.

Independent research has proven that these individuals are three times more likely to be productive in their jobs than individuals who are not aligned with the work they are involved in.

The correct ‘fit’ with the job enables employees to live and work in accordance with what is truly valuable and meaningful to them. They are focused ‘on the job’ not just ‘in the job’, thus maximizing fulfillment, happiness and productivity.

Take the Free Test

If you want to know how to get into your ‘flow state’ at work, or how to help your team  – Take The Free Test at www.human-bydesign.com