Employee Benefits Live 2016: The Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) is set to link performance reviews and bonus awards to the organisation’s key values and behaviours.
After launching its core values in 2015 to help align employees with business and performance goals, this year the sporting organisation will incorporate its values into employee performance reviews.
Staff will be reviewed on whether they are living and actioning the organisation’s four core values of teamwork, integrity, passion, and excellence, as well as associated behaviours. How employees embody these values will be one of the factors considered when issuing performance-related awards, such as bonuses.
Addressing delegates during a keynote presentation at Employee Benefits Live 2016, Vicky Williams (pictured), director of people at the LTA, said: “I’m now making sure that we are truly living the [organisation’s] behaviours because each employee will be reviewed against them and will also be rewarded or not against their living of [these values and behaviours].”
Alongside its values, the LTA has put forward behaviours that staff should consider and embody to help bring its core values to life.
Williams said: “Our behaviours are statements that can be read and understood by everybody. So they cut through gender, they’re applicable to [employees] under 30, generation Ys, they’re also applicable to baby boomers, and they’re applicable to people who might want to look at them before they join the organisation.”
The values are clearly visible on the organisation’s website and are also included in job descriptions.
Williams said: “We put values and behaviours at the forefront of the welcome day [for new joiners], and then we do a repeat induction day three weeks and three months later, just to make sure that people are truly living and understanding the values and the behaviours.
“It’s actually our new starters who have the best impact on knowing whether our values and our behaviours are correct. We’ve introduced a new-starter lunch for people who come into the organisation and we talk about whether the values and behaviours are actually working in the organisation.
“New starters are a really powerful set of people; they talk honestly and openly and they have a great knowledge that they bring with them from other organisations.”
LTA utilised a range of communication methods to highlight its values to staff and to help embed these into the organisation’s culture. It held focus groups to gather feedback from across the business, as well as briefing employees in small groups during bite-sized training sessions.