High performance working: A policy review

This Evidence Report presents the results of a Policy Review that scopes the current field of the most relevant, core initiatives and support available to organisations in the UK, to promote and assist in the adoption of High-Performance Working (HPW) practices. It is one of four research components of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills’ skills utilisation project. Skills utilisation is concerned with maximising the contribution that people can make in the workplace, and therefore how well people’s abilities have been deployed, harnessed and developed to optimise organisational performance. What happens inside the work place is therefore crucial to skills utilisation. This is why a key focus of the UK Commission’s work is on understanding how organisations can be successfully run to achieve HPW. HPW encompasses the bringing together and implementation of a number of practices in a holistic way to effectively manage an organisation. As such it must provide an important means to stimulate businesses to review their business strategies; move up the value chain raise their demand for high skills; reorganise their work; and by so doing improve skills utilisation in the workplace and, hence, firm performance. In order to understand how this is implemented in praxis, please have a look at our case studies reports published alongside this report. We hope you find this report useful and informative in building the evidence we need to achieve a more prosperous and inclusive society.