One of the core roles for Human Resources professionals is to work to optimize the performance of the people in the organization. How we go about doing this is influenced by our beliefs and assumptions about performance and what leads to great performance.

One of the most commonly held assumptions about human performance is that it is evenly distributed. That is there are as many people who are above average as there are people who are below average.  In their paper “The Best & the Rest: Revisiting the Norm of Normality of Individual Performance”  Ernest O’Boyle Jr  and  Herman Aguinis challenge this assumption. They present data which indicates that far from being evenly distributed, the performance curve looks more like a ski slope with very few high performers and with more people below average than above it.

This is a fundamental shift in how most organizations view, measure and reward performance. In BC HRMA’s latest Research Briefing, we explain the research and the findings and highlight what this could and should mean for HR practice as it relates to the core area of performance management.

Research Briefings are a service from BC HRMA’s professional services team. Our aim is to make it easier and quicker for HR professionals to find and apply the latest and best people management insight to their challenges and projects. This paper contains a concise and practical summary of a recent academic finding that should shape your HR practices.