Why performance?

During his opening speech at the CIPD Annual Conference in Manchester, Chief Executive Neil Carberry underlined the importance of focusing on performance. Here, David Ducheyne, EAPM President-elect, reflects on that call for the profession to demonstrate its contribution and asks: what does it take to make sustainable performance possible?

The purpose of HR

I have a simple definition of the purpose of HR. HR is about making sure that people are willing and able to perform sustainably to create value for all stakeholders.

We can argue about the wording. We can talk about contribution, strategy execution or productivity. We could talk about the various stakeholders, who should not exclusively be the shareholders.

When we talk about stakeholders, we can think about customer experience, people experience, shareholder value, community impact, ecological footprint. These are the consequence of what an organisation does and therefore what people do. But if we want to deliver that stakeholder value, we also need to focus on leading indicators like satisfaction, wellbeing, motivation, retention, productivity on individual, team and organisational level.

For HR, the real work is in the leading ones, because that is where we can still act and because they are necessary for performance.

What enables sustainable performance?

And then we could talk about what enables sustainable performance. This is the “making sure” in the purpose statement. It is the most difficult part of the sentence. How can we make sure that people are willing (motivation) and able (health and competence) to contribute sustainably to the execution of a strategy that creates value for stakeholders, including the people themselves?

And here we talk about leadership, quality of work, inclusion, culture, decent pay, … Traditional HR would talk about finding, developing, rewarding and recognising people. These people processes remain present, but are not enough. HR is more about creating the right conditions in which people perform sustainably: organisational development, leadership effectiveness, high-performing cultures, healthy work, …

The happiness derailment

I remember, when I launched my definition at a gathering of Belgian HR professionals, half of those present thought the definition was cold. “What about happiness?”, someone asked.

That was the time when chief happiness officers were mushrooming and the term work happiness was invented. To me, that was a derailment of HR. Because, in spite of all the lamentations that HR was not taken seriously, the profession was shooting itself in the foot by abandoning the business language. Some people even spoke about HR being about love for people.

HR is not about happiness. It is even dishonest to say that. It’s not about love (it’s not about hate, either). Because love is unconditional. Love does not have performance expectations. Because an organisation cannot be responsible for happiness. That’s why the word work happiness was invented. But again, that is a derailment. Wellbeing and satisfaction are not happiness in business clothes. They are conditions an organisation can influence, and they connect to performance. Happiness, it cannot promise and it should not pursue.

Performance and wellbeing go both ways

Satisfaction has an impact on company value. Because dissatisfied people will probably perform less, unless their work is so meaningful that they overcome the reasons for unhappiness and dissatisfaction. And doing meaningful work is the best road to performance.

Great teams will deliver results and they will have people who feel well and are motivated. But the causality is both ways. People who perform feel better than those who don’t. So performance can lead to wellbeing just like the other way is true. That means solving a performance problem can be a wellbeing intervention, just as improving wellbeing can be a performance intervention.

The friction between the economic and the social dimension becomes clear in health care: people who work as a nurse, physician, or any other medical and paramedical profession, are there because they want to care. But soon, they are confronted with the need to be effective and efficient and that there are restrictions. That might make their work less pleasant and there might be feelings of regret that they cannot help everybody the way they would like to. But, and I have witnessed this, when they can they will show why they are there by giving extraordinary care.

There is no contradiction between performance and quality of work. It is both.

There is no HR strategy

And this brings me to a reflection. There is no HR strategy. There should be no HR strategy. There is only a business strategy in which there is an important people part. Strategies do not fail. People do. And when they succeed it is thanks to the resourcefulness, the collaboration, the learning and the performance of people, teams and organisations. All too often, I have seen HR functions operate like islands, generating a separated strategy, starting from their expertise. But HR should start from the needs of the customers and the business, adding the expertise to the equation. And that is how HR will have a seat at the table, become the trusted partner, and have an impact on the business performance and the future of the organisation.

Start with the leaders

Therefore, the place to start is with the leadership. Leaders deliver on the balance between performance and work life. They balance short and long term. They integrate the needs of stakeholders. They know there is no point in reaching financial results by burning out people. They are the people who make it happen, together with their teams, together with the other leaders. Leadership is the single most important organisational capability that makes organisations successful.

Coming back to the speech

So, coming back to that opening speech: Neil’s call to focus on performance brings us back to a fundamental purpose of HR. The challenge is in the making sure – creating the conditions in which people are willing and able to perform sustainably. That is not an HR strategy. That is the people part of the business strategy.