HR has been deluged with mountains of remedies—ranging from styles-based, 360, preference, personality, and competency-based assessments, to process-driven analytics, to a whole host of other solutions. Why? Because CEOs seek high-performance cultures that will deliver sustainable bottom-line results. 

Despite the best recruitment efforts, few existing team members or new hires become top performers. Something is missing. Enter new baseline human capital performance metrics that use behavioral science and emerging technologies that offer resolutions to systemic workforce performance issues. 

Top executives worldwide pursue the common goals of organizational profitability, mission and vision alignment, and long-term growth. Making these goals a reality requires: 

• sustainable organization development and financial health

• effective operational performance

• a top-performing and engaged workforce

• ability to attract and retain top talent. 

The Human Factor

The pursuit of optimum performance has been plagued by misconceptions and frustrations attached to the apparent “soft skills” nature of workforce development. The ability to link performance to the bottom line has been a challenge, as is the consistent delivery of corporate goals, meeting new demands with agility, and strong team leadership working toward the vision. 

The dilution of focus and performance from the top down often erodes any chance of sustained success in key areas of the organization, which results in higher costs and overall reduction in engagement. Strategic plans and high value projects can only be executed successfully through the sustained collective actions of employees. The inability to accurately manage the human performance aspect of organizational intent continues to deliver outcomes below expectations. 

Hiring 

Over the last 10 years, technological developments in the talent marketplace have added pressure to the quest for high performance. More effective ATS systems and the increased integration of social media have created a larger talent pool and streamlined communication between companies and applicants. 

These improvements have made the system more efficient, but they have failed to make the process of hiring top performers more effective. If the challenge is finding the right candidate, increasing the volume of candidates doesn’t resolve the issue. The pressure on hiring increases just as the risk of making the wrong hire increases with the volume of available candidates.  

Performance Management 

With current workforces, leadership is challenged to achieve sustainable high-performance engagement—mostly with a small percentage of top performers (let’s say the top 10 percent) carrying the rest of employees with less than desirable performance levels. The risks of litigation and high turnover can cause disruption and create time consuming and costly management of poor performance. 

The training and development industry delivers excellent programs and solutions, but it doesn’t always create the permanent and sustained performance behavior changes necessary to drive higher productivity and greater bottom line results. 

Transforming Performance With Expert Systems

The success of expert systems can be traced to the wide scope of commercial, financial, and industrial applications, ranging from Wall Street to your doctor’s office. An expert system is a computer program that simulates the judgment of an expert. Such a system contains a “knowledge base” of accumulated experience and uses a reasoning process embedded in the software—the “thinking” part of the system. 

What if software could quantify human capital metrics (replicating the top 10 percent performers) that link directly to measurable performance execution, provide on-demand, individualized training and development solutions and also perform highly complex talent audits for strategic decision making? Such systems exist today and are specifically focused on organization-wide performance transformation. 

The top HR, disruptive technologies employing knowledge bases have the potential to gain significant traction in the HR marketplace—and radically alter how the components of the talent management life cycle are delivered. If HR wants to be recognized by the C-suite and boardroom for making an impact on the bottom line, they would be well-advised to deploying a 10Rule Strategy along with a Transformational Smart System. This could be a game changer in the pursuit of organizational performance and strategy execution.