More than 90% of UK and Ireland employees in a new survey report said their team was high-performing, but only 51% of leaders who manage those teams agreed. The disparity between employee and leader perceptions could make it challenging for their organisations to achieve success in the future.
The report, The Secrets of High Performance, from human resources and finance software company MHR Global found that employees and leaders viewed high performance differently, based on their position in the organisation.
MHR’s research found that 91% of employees considered their organisations to be high-performing, compared with 79% of leaders, the report said. This disconnect has informed a mixed outlook for 2025: 66% of employees believe their organisation will be high-performing this year, yet only 41% of leaders felt the same.
Performance is viewed subjectively based on a person’s position, according to the report. Leaders say high performance is about operational excellence (25%), moving fast and making decisions quickly (24%), and attracting and retaining the best talent (21%).
For employees, the top traits of high performance were:
- A highly skilled team or workforce (37%);
- A team that achieves financial success (33%); and
- A team overseen by effective, stable leadership (31%).
The research is based on late 2024 responses of 1,502 finance, HR, or payroll employees and 150 C-suite respondents across the UK and Ireland.
Contrasting views on high-performance pillars
Leaders’ and employees’ key drivers for high performance contrast significantly. Employees placed more value on high employee engagement as a means to drive high performance, whereas leaders placed more importance on recruiting, retaining, and developing top talent.
Employees said their organisation needs to improve employee engagement this year to drive performance, the report said. For leaders asked how their organisation can improve in 2025, they emphasised giving people more autonomy and empowerment at work — the same area most leaders identified as the strongest in their organisation.
Both leaders and employees identified their organisation’s weakest points as those falling under the remit of leadership, the report said. Leaders said that clear communication, collaboration, and feedback was their organisation’s weakest point. Employees said their organisation struggled the most with openness to risk-taking and innovation.
Lack of confidence driven by ambiguity, uncertainty
One reason leaders view high performance differently from employees is lack of clarity from executives, the report said, which is leading to increased anxiety for those in senior roles.
“Only 47% of organisational leaders said they have a clear understanding of what creates high performance,” the report said. “They aren’t always helped by their CEOs in this. In fact, 25% of leaders say that their CEO doesn’t know what high performance looks like, and 27% say that their CEO doesn’t help them achieve it.”
Consequently, the interplay between a challenging economic climate and ambiguous expectations means that only 42% of leaders believe their organisation’s performance will surpass last year’s performance, the report said.
Organisations must move away from siloed goals into a unified vision of what high performance means for them, the report said. “Leaders’ and workers’ goals are perennial — they still want efficiency, productivity, growth, and impact — but the way they achieve them now requires a fresh approach,” the report concluded.
— To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Steph Brown at Stephanie.Brown@aicpa-cima.com.