HIGH PERFORMANCE WORKING (HPW)

High Performance Working (HPW)

High Performance Working (HPW)

Introduction

The environment of business is marked by change. Huge environmental shifts—such as the growth of technology, the globalization of the economy, the changing demographics of the workforce, changing customer demands, increased competition, and the tightening regulatory environment—have pressed organizations to rethink their underlying assumptions, and their organizational structures and systems, to position themselves for success in the midst of such turbulence. The traditional bureaucratic organization model was not built for flexibility and does not fit a turbulent marketplace.

To achieve and sustain high levels of business performance and quality of work life (QWL) for employees in the highly competitive and rapidly changing marketplace, organizations have increasingly moved away from the bureaucratic structure of the past and embraced a series of practices, which collectively define the high-performance organization. The high-performance approach is intended to be comprehensive and superordinate; application of subcomponents (e.g., process reengineering, customer-supplier partnerships, work cells) in a piecemeal way is seen as a partial and incomplete solution to the complex problem of sustaining organizational excellence in a turbulent environment.

Although there does not appear to be a consensus on a single, comprehensive definition of the highperformance organization, the research and practice literature point to a set of common elements, many of which are visible in benchmark organizations:

Teams: Perhaps the most visible and pervasive marker of the high-performance model is the widespread application of the team concept. Production is commonly done by small semiautonomous teams, which set production schedules, manage quality for themselves, do equipment maintenance, and solve problems as they arise. Through open information sharing, teams understand the business sufficiently well that they do not need to call on a supervisor or other resources to address their daily issues. Such self-directed work teams are usually multiskilled, so individual jobs are enriched and teams can deploy their resources flexibly. Teams are also visible in nonproduction functions in the highperformance model as well—quality improvement teams, safety teams, new product development teams, procurement teams, and recognition teams, for example.

Titles and roles change: Multiskilled employees operating in a team concept are commonly called associates, technicians, team members, or some other term with a professional connotation befitting their expanded role. Also, although in the past the supervisory role may have been reasonably well captured in the old definition of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling work, in the highperformance organization managers operate more as business leaders than as work bosses. They set direction for their teams (which is in alignment with the overall vision and strategic direction of their plant or unit), and they coach and facilitate more than direct or closely manage the work of others. Their roles are defined as performance manager, team builder, business leader, and change manager. Common supervisory or management titles in the highperformance model are team manager, coach, or facilitator. The high-performance organization is also flatter than a traditionally structured organization, because of broadening individual job responsibilities at all levels and reduction in layers of ...