These are the Key steps to create a performance-oriented culture in your startup

The market, today, is fiercely competitive and performance is the key to corporate growth. Especially in case of a startup, performance becomes a necessity for survival in the market. While this depends on various factors and practices, it is important to have a structured and holistic approach in order to achieve the best results for your organisation.

Performance Oriented Culture
Unlike larger companies, startups look to optimise the output from each employee to drive highest productivity, often with limited resources. Hence, it is crucial for the management to develop a performance oriented culture in the organisation. This can only be possible when each employee not only understands his / her role but also functions with the rest of the organisation in perfect synergy.

However, since it can be a difficult task for the management to pay individual attention to each employee, it is very important to develop a culture that keeps employees involved and motivated towards a common goal. There are many methods and processes that can be implemented in this direction. Several startups, understanding the importance of driving high performance, are implementing these and reaping the benefits.

An organisation’s performance depends on the functioning of various factors and departments to bring out the best from each individual, leading to achieving a high level of efficiency and productivity on an organisational level.

Intelligent Hiring
A major need, not exclusively for startups, is to hire people for both short-term and long-term goals. While hiring people with desired qualification and direct experience may be a good idea to meet short-term requirements, a result-oriented and motivated candidate may be a long-term asset to your organisation. Hence, it is extremely important to have a balanced approach keeping these factors in mind when hiring your team.

It is important to list down the ‘must haves’ ahead of going into the hiring process that are clearly mapped against the job responsibilities. Defining the required results first and then choosing the best suited person to excel at achieving them is a more effective method of acquiring the right talent. This would filter the pool of candidates down to high-potential individuals who could get the job done most efficiently.

Effective Induction
Once hired, the organisation should also consider the responsibility of ensuring the employees’ subsequent success. It is important to make the new employees understand the organisation’s culture and objectives besides helping them align themselves to the company’s work culture. They should also be completely aware of the role they play and the organisation’s expectations from them. Additionally, each employee should be able to clearly visualise his/her own growth path within the organisation, both professional and personal. This acts as a key motivating factor to drive them towards giving their best.

Performance Management
Incentivising achievements is an effective way to keep the workforce motivated towards performing to their full potential. Recognising and appreciating one’s efforts and rewarding with incentives keeps them engaged to give their best.

Planned Structure
Departments need to be created in a way that assignments are carried out seamlessly and each team member is able to contribute as per the role he/she plays in the particular department or team. The departments / teams should be planned in a way that each employee gets enough opportunities to not just give their best, but also to work on skills they want to improve. This is a way to align the organisational objectives with individual goals which will consequently result in higher work satisfaction within the organisation.

Measurement
Measuring results is a key part of performance management as it clearly lays out the organisation’s strengths and weaknesses. It also builds the basis to recognise and incentivise good individual performances. It is important to emphasise on a result-oriented approach to measure performance instead of blindly going by the traditional, job-description based assessment tests.

A performance-oriented culture is created when each individual’s approach and efforts are aligned with the organisation’s core objectives and goals. While these are some of the ways which can help you in creating such a culture within your organisation, it is still a learning process that each entrepreneur goes through to find out what works for their enterprise.

(The article has been authored by HCL Founder Ajai Chowdhry)

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