What does average mean especially in today’s workplace where the lack of employee engagement drains profits as well as the performance of those employees who are working hard and going beyond what is expected?

Years ago, a wise mentor of mine shared these words: “When you change how you look at things, the things you look at will change.”

His words echoed the thoughts of French novelist Marcel Proust who wrote, “The true voyage of discovery is not seeking new landscapes, but seeing with new eyes.”

In business, being able to look at what has always been and imagine it to look differently is a challenge. No where is this more evident than in the word average.

Average Performance In The Workplace

What does average mean especially in today’s workplace where the lack of employee engagement drains profits as well as the performance of those employees who are working hard and going beyond what is expected?

Ongoing employee engagement research conducted by Gallup continues to suggest that approximately:

1 in 4 employees are actively engaged

2 in 4 employees are disengaged

1 in 4 employees are actively disengaged

Another way to find the answer to what is average is to ask:

What does it mean to give a 110 percent?

For many the response will be to go beyond what is expected or to go beyond average.

So if 110 percent is beyond average, then 100 percent is average.

Now, this viewpoint may shock a lot of people including employees who have been conditioned to believe that 100 percent is exceptional, outstanding from their educational experiences. Average for them is combining the scores of all students and dividing by that number. If their performance falls above that number, they are above average. And from a statistical viewpoint, this is a correct mathematical calculation.

What is Average?

In the workplace, employees are paid -- as the old expression goes -- 8 for 8 (8 hours of pay for 8 hours of work). This is what is expected or the average. However due to a variety of reasons from poor management to having the wrong person in the wrong seat with the wrong talents securing the wrong results, only 1 in 4 employees are average.

Now imagine you as the small business owner to C Suite executive have a weekly payroll of $10,000 not including other benefits. What average is costing you is $7,500 in lost productivity. How long can your business continue to function as is without drastic action being taken?

During a recent facilitation with some managers for a multi-billion dollar organization, one of the younger and newer managers asked this question: “Why do I have to sell people to do their job? They are getting paid to do the work. Period!” Other managers echoed her frustration because they realized that management in the past had not consistently addressed poor or less-than-average performance. And, of course, a few of the older managers did not see any problems.

Avoid Wasted Time

Another experienced, but new to this organization, manager discussed the time necessary to document the less-than-average performance. With all the projects he was managing, taking time to document an employee who was actively disengaged was keeping him from doing other much needed tasks. However, he realized this documentation was necessary because not to take action would result in much more serious wasted time downstream.

To create a culture of average begins with management. These individuals by modeling the desired leadership behaviors and having the updated tools from job descriptions to performance appraisals to policy manuals can move employee engagement to 8 for 8 or average. Those who cannot be moved then must be reassigned to a position where they are better suited or even asked to leave the organization. For average begins at the top and cascades down throughout the organization.

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