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Do You Have a High-Performance Culture?



When you have the honor of working with multiple companies and thousands of sellers and managers each week, you gain a unique perspective. There is a feeling you get, sometimes inexplicable, but there are none the less of teams that are on fire, cohesive and performance driven. It’s also easy to identify those that are not.

In a white paper entitled: Reap What you Sow: How Fostering a Culture of Ongoing Performance Reviews Drives Growth from the Cornerstone Group, they share three things necessary to shift from performance reviews to a performance culture:

1. Make performance discussions ongoing. Establish regular check-ins with employees to discuss goals, performance benchmarks and measure employee progress. Use these less-formal chats as a chance to embrace employee feedback.

2. Align employee goals with company objectives. Just 7% of employees understand their company’s goals or how they fit into them. Managers need to communicate the organization's goals so that team members can see how their work fits in the bigger picture.

3. Offer training to boost skills. The global workforce lists “an opportunity to grow” as one of their top needs. Managers that have weekly informal reviews, (in our radio world we call these the one-on-ones) can discuss learning opportunities that help build the skills identified during the discussion.

The report suggests that a lack of training has devastating consequences. Organizations with only a minimal investment in talent development see 74% lower profit margins, and no training leads to a 35% higher turnover rate. The traditional approach of company-provided training boosts retention by 93% and improves morale.

Annual performance reviews are still a routine part of company life. At the same time, one study found 95% of employees are dissatisfied with the process and 90% don’t believe they provide accurate or useful information.

In our industry, I believe we have been ahead of this curve with weekly one-on-ones and check-ins with our sellers. Have we also included programming and the business office in this process? Are we checking in regularly with them? It seems the more frequent, less-formal check-ins can have some amazing results. According to a study from the Brandon Hall Group, companies that switch from yearly evaluations to a culture of ongoing, less formal reviews see:

• 70% increase in revenue

• 72% decrease in turnover

• 54% boost in customer satisfaction scores

Sounds like important enough results to consider changing our approach.

Jeff Schmidt is SVP-Professional Development at the Radio Advertising Bureau. You can reach Jeff at Jeff.Schmidt@RAB.com. or follow him on social media: Twitter and LinkedIn.

Source: Jeff Schmidt, RAB