Employee performance directly impacts the success of your business. Low performance can be losing your company a considerable amount of revenue. In fact, businesses with disengaged low performing employees lose more than $450 billion of revenue a year (1). This has led many organizations to invest more into their learning and development programs. However, without the right strategy these programs make little to no difference.
Performance consulting has quickly become a popular solution among leading organizations around the globe, but what is it exactly and how can they help you to improve the performance of your employees?
What is Performance Consulting?
Performance consulting put simply is the practice of measuring performance of people within your company, identifying, gaps and potential solutions. The aim of any learning and development program is to improve the skills and performance of your employees. Unfortunately, not all learning solutions provide optimum business results, and some performance problems cannot be solved with training. A skilled performance consultant can help you identify the cause of the problem and create a process for improvement.
3 Reasons You Need a Performance Improvement Consultant
- Creating Business Aligned Learning Initiatives
One of the best benefits of working with a performance consultant is that they can help you develop a learning strategy that works. An experienced consultant will have a performance consulting process with several levels of evaluation that they can use to measure human performance gaps. Although, the performance consulting model they use can vary depending on your partner, the process of measurement is an essential key to creating learning programs that provide value.
They can utilize the information they gather to create a learning strategy that is properly aligned with your organizations business goals. A properly aligned strategy is one of the best ways you can maximize the ROI of your training programs.
- Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Existing Training Programs
Poor performing learning and development programs are all too common. If you have an employee training program in place that is not delivering positive results a performance consultant can help. The most successful employee training programs improve employee performance. They also directly impact business performance. A performance consultant can help you identify the reasons your program is not providing the performance results you desire.
In many cases organizations are unsure of the effectiveness of their training programs. They may have high completion rates but low changes in behavior. Or they don’t have the proper tools and knowledge for effective measurement. In these cases, a professional consultant can identify if there is a problem and if so, they can also find the cause.
- Closing Performance Gaps
If you already know the cause of a performance gap and need help closing it a performance consultant can assist you by identifying a strategy. Every business is unique and so are the employees that work there. A one size fits all strategy to learning and development does not often help to close performance gaps.
To truly design and implement a winning training program that has an impact on business performance you need the right kind of strategy. Employee development programs that are designed with an outcomes-based approach and that are properly aligned with your business objectives will provide the best results. A performance consultant will be able to effectively assist you in this process.
Final Note
Increasing employee engagement and performance is one of the toughest challenge’s organizations face today. It can often be difficult to accurately identify the issues that are impacting employee performance. A consultant can help you improve employee performance no matter which stage you are in.
Working with a performance consultant can not only help you identify performance gaps in your existing programs. They can identify what is causing them and they can also help you develop a plan to close them. Consultants can also help you develop new employee training programs that are aligned with your business objectives for an increased ROI.
Wondering how to select the best performance consulting partner? Read Competencies to Look for in Your Performance Consulting Partner
