Can better leaders and better cultures drive better productivity?

By Marty Parker, President and CEO

Leaders and organizations that have been focusing their attention inward recently – prioritizing talent retention over talent acquisition – are not alone.  Focusing on people-centric programs and engagement to keep top talent makes sense, especially with evolving trends in digital and hybrid work, a global pandemic, talent scarcity, and an ageing population.

A strong retention strategy is one way to ensure continuity and stability – it helps maintain institutional knowledge, delivers growth opportunities for existing talent, and of course builds (or maintains) good corporate culture. But why focus on building good talent and good culture when we should be focused on building better, high-performance teams and cultures? Job satisfaction and happiness are important, but when teams and leaders embrace a culture of high-performance and personal productivity, we see improved engagement plus more success for the organization and a better economy overall.

Canada has a productivity problem. We have seen virtually no productivity growth in recent years, and in the past decade we’ve slipped as nation compared with many other counties. In fact, we’re now only 70% as productive as our colleagues in the U.S.  

To try and combat this – and to drive productivity not only at a national level, but at an organization and even individual level – leaders need to focus on three drivers of productivity: capital intensity (innovation and better technology and tools); labour composition and intangibles  (training and upskilling, as well as culture and leadership); and multifactor productivity (a combination of the other two).

What does this mean for your people and culture strategy?

High-performance, highly productive organizations are better able to weather economic shifts and invest back into the organization, making them more competitive in terms recruiting and retaining top talent.  It boils down to:

• Finding and developing better leaders. We need be innovative in how we’re recruiting and retaining high-performance talent, and how we’re driving investment in our people. This includes being intentional about upskilling (our teams and ourselves) to ensure that top talent has the growth opportunities needed to support engagement and retention, as well as the tools and knowledge necessary to drive growth and productivity.
  
  We also need to focus on the leadership behaviours that are critical for success in today’s workplace – empathy, collaboration, drive, and accountability to name a few. Incorporating team and leadership assessments into your hiring process and/or annual planning process is a great place to start.
  
  
• Building better cultures. Culture is your competitive advantage, and it can make or break your recruitment and retention efforts. People-focused programs are vital elements of strong cultures – programs that support diversity and inclusiveness, champion mental and physical heath, prioritize flexibility, and more help drive engagement and productivity. But better cultures require a balance of people-focused programs and leadership behaviours focused on performance. There are plenty of digital productivity systems that support in-office, hybrid or remote workers, and innovations in AI are driving speed and efficiency. There is also professional development available that focuses on building the skills leaders need to drive outcomes.

• Driving better results. Building integrated measurement and scoring across all functions within the organization is critical for assessing and driving engagement and productivity. From client satisfaction and net promoter scores, to revenue per employee and employee lifetime value, technology is enabling organizations to measure and assess more than ever before, in ways that both inform the bottom line support culture and engagement.

By investing in our people and our culture, by finding the balance between people-first programs and accountability, and by tracking and acting on results, we can improve our productivity and our competitiveness – as organizations, and as a country.

Waterstone can help. Connect with our team of executive search and leadership and culture advisory experts today and find out how we’re building better leaders and better cultures that drive better results.