Three levels of EX – essentials, emphasis, excellence Essentials – At the bottom are aspects of the workplace that employees are not actively collaborating with colleagues by provide little differentiation across companies. Most firms sharing information and working easily across organizational perform, in their employees’ eyes, to a similar level in terms boundaries. There is a common characteristic to these topics of providing the workplace basics of goal understanding, which suggests that high-performance companies give extra organizing work efficiently, fair compensation and local emphasis to personal influence or agency at work, allowing manager support for performance. We can characterize these employees to actively take advantage of opportunities as workplace “essentials” – foundational capabilities most to excel. organizations spend a lot of time and effort on, but which alone do not characterize high performance. Excellence – Finally, there is a group of topics that most differentiate the high-performance companies, and that Emphasis – Next there comes a group of topics where high can be considered the true “hallmarks of excellence”. The performers are noticeably differentiated compared to the best companies, in their employees’ eyes, excel by inspiring global average. In these organizations, reward is insufficient connection to mission and purpose, providing growth without also building people’s capabilities through training opportunity to fuel ambitions, engendering deep trust in and learning experiences that advance their skills. Likewise, senior leadership effectiveness and creating a sense of work delivery is suboptimal unless employees exercise voice drive (through strong customer focus, ongoing change through proper job authority and avenues to speak up and management and agility in meeting marketplace demands). drive new ideas. Connection to purpose is ineffective unless The common characteristic of these factors is that they are employees bring their full selves to work in an inclusive a function of the mindset within the company. environment. People management efforts fall short if Based on the extent to which survey topics are hallmarks of high-performance EX companies EX in high-performance companies vs global average Inspiration 13 Areas on which Ex high-performance Drive 10 11 cellencecompanies excel Trust Growth 10 Market Focus 9 Voice 7 EmphasisAreas where Inclusion 6 some companies begin to pull away from Capability 6 the global average Collaboration 5 Support 4 Basics all companies do Organized Work 4 Essentialsreasonably well and which don’t especially differentiate Organized Structure 2 high-performance Understanding 2 Fair Pay 2 Source: Willis Towers Watson Normative Database. © Willis Towers Watson 5 willistowerswatson.com