High Performance Organizations in Public

High Performance Organizations in Public Sector

Today's extremely competitive and volatile corporate world is not meant for slow growing or inefficient organizations. It is now the aim of every organization, in both private and public sector, to create a high performance organization. This may be a relatively new concept but it is rapidly gaining popularity. A high performance organization is the one that can create a balance between performance, quality, customer relations and profitability. High performance organizations are thus defined as "groups of employees who produce desired goods or services at higher quality with the same or fewer resources. Their productivity and quality improve continuously, from day-to-day,-week to week, and year to year, leading to the achievement of their mission."

For the creation of a high performance organization, it is important to focus on everything down from leadership style to culture to operations right up to profits, customer services and integration of it all. But all this depends on the vision statement of the organization. Where does the organization plan to reach and how does it plan it improve its performance are some basic things defined in a vision statement. It is thus defined as "a preferred future that spells out the conditions and quality of life that people with an interest in the organization want to achieve."

In a non-profit organization, the development of a culture that would promote the growth of high performance organization is easier said than done. This is because while in the private sector, compensation and monetary rewards are used to motivate employees, the same doesn't hold true in the case of public sector. But employees' motivation plays the most important role. The more motivated they are, the better are the results. For this reason non-profit/public sector organizations need to focus on other possible factors affecting motivation. Public sector organizations are now increasingly being forced to offer better services but at lower costs. Higher costs are not just an option for public organizations and therefore what they need to do is create a value-oriented culture. They must understand how the value of their services is being perceived by citizens. In the private sector, money is usually equated with quality. If customers are spending more, they believe they will get better quality. However since in the public sector, costs have to be kept low, citizens perceive value in terms of other things such as performance speed and customer satisfaction.

In this regard, we can cite the example of Arizona Department of Revenue which is a good example of a high performance organization in the public sector (Jupp & Younger, 2004). This department was driven to achieve better results due to pressure from stakeholders who demanded in an increase in revenue while improving service to the customers at the same time. The organization identified its key goals which became its vision statement. They key goals included customer satisfaction, simplification of communication between the taxpayer and agency, increased compliance rates and maximization of revenue. Elliott Hibbs, director of the Arizona Department of Revenue, is excited about the results his department has managed to achieve by creating a high performance organization where value matters. He explained: "Previous administrations had done great work increasing customer service levels and satisfaction. But an unintended consequence of that emphasis was that voluntary compliance rates had dipped, with a negative effect on overall tax revenue. The more comprehensive approach to public-sector value, as applied to my department, is the most exciting thing I've seen in my 20 years of service in terms of balancing accountability and agency performance to deliver value to citizens." (Jupp & Younger, 2004)

Jupp & Younger (2004) have identified some important characteristics of a high performance organization in public sector. They maintain that HPOs in public sector are:

relentlessly outcome- and value-focused," "highly efficient," "exceptionally aware of changes in their environments, and able to translate insight into action," "highly focused on their core capabilities, and adopt outsourcing strategies to improve efficiencies in non-core activities," "committed to the growth and development of their employees" and "government are headed by courageous leaders."