The research papers highlighted below present some recent findings on People Performance Management. Abstracts are featured below.

To obtain a full transcript of the paper(s) of interest to you, please click on that topic.

“Above and Beyond” Employees Drive Quality Customer Service
This study of a large retail insurance company attempts to understand the critical role that employee illingness to go “above and beyond” plays in ensuring high levels of customer service.

Best Practices in Internal Marketing
In the first comprehensive study, companies at the forefront of internal marketing were found to share several broad characteristics.

How Behind-the-Scenes Employees Impact the Bottom Line
This is believed to be the first study to examine how employee satisfaction and engagement drive an organization’s financial success, even if those employees have no direct customer contact. The study involved 90 companies with 5,568 of their employees and 37,036 customers.

How Loyal Are Your Employees?
Company loyalty is declining, even among top-performing employees, according to this study.

In Banking, Employee Satisfaction Drives Customer Loyalty
In an examination of the banking industry, the authors affirm the connection between employee atisfaction and customer trust. They find that “companies with sustained records of superior financial performance owe their success to the development of strong, ongoing relationships with their customers.

Incentive Programs Work, But Only When Used as Directed
Perhaps the most rigorous survey ever of motivation research reports impressive results from incentive programs, but notes that “most organizations lack the knowledge or will to create properly constructed programs that yield desired results.”

Moving Employees Up from Satisfied to Engaged
While many employers boast about improving employee satisfaction levels, research has shown that employee engagement surpasses satisfaction as an indicator of productivity. But a Gallup Organization poll says just 28% of employees are “engaged,” characterizing the rest as “not engaged” or “actively disengaged.”

Recognition and Rewards Seen as More Effective than Cash
A cross-section of managers in various businesses who use reward and recognition programs was asked to assess the effectiveness of cash and non-cash rewards.

Seven Traits of High-Performing Companies
This study found that high performing organizations report a far higher level of motivating customer contact employees than do low-performing companies.

What Comes First: Positive Attitude or Business Success?
It’s the business equivalent of “the chicken or the egg.” These studies explored whether employee attitudes and behavior determine organizational performance, or whether superior business performance leads to positive employee attitudes and behavior.

Why People Join (and Leave) a Company
Two studies surveyed factors that influence decisions that people make about joining and staying with a company.