Most businesses feel they can perform better. But to do this is it as simple as creating a high-performance work culture, resulting in higher performing employees? Or conversely, is it an easier path just to hire high performing employees who are ready to tackle any project or challenge that ultimately creates your high-performance culture?

What is High Performance Culture?

High performance culture is related to a high performance workplace where the employees are motivated and productive. Many factors contribute towards this, such as support from the company, having the necessary resources, and feeling aligned with the values of the company. Ultimately, seeing the greater good or outcome of the work they are doing can contribute towards a high-performance culture.

So does a High Performance Culture Lead to Higher Performing Employees... Or the Other Way Around?

Companies without a high performance culture will likely start to wonder whether they should focus on their culture to engage higher performing employees or simply work on hiring high-performance employees and the culture will subsequently improve.

There is no one right approach to this question. It’s highly dependent on the type of people already in your organisation, the timeline for needing to improve, and of course cost.

Changing culture can take a lot longer than hiring in a string of high performers. Hiring a string of high performers can be expensive and may not necessarily guarantee longer term overall higher performance.

As early as 1997, McKinsey shared that getting the best people into businesses could create better workplaces; this was known as the ‘War for Talent’. However, this approach didn’t necessarily work out always as planned, as profitability for some companies dropped off despite them successfully hiring top talent.

Research by HBR considered the possibility of shared values leading to higher-performing teams, so there is some support to the theory that higher performance can be evolved from within the existing workplace.

So, how will you support your workplace toward becoming more productive? By planning and focussing on building a high performance culture or by focussing on hiring in high performing talent expecting overall business performance will subsequently improve.

Linq HR are HR specialists who assist organisations define their HR needs, source the right HR suppliers and solutions, and benchmark performance.