Human Performance Capability: Learning How to Find ROI

Your feedback from our CHOLearning conferences gave us a clear signal: the profession is working hard, but still stuck with initiative overload, low engagement, unclear ROI, and difficulty securing executive support.

Because these challenges cut across every role, we’re starting the year by helping the community address them.

Many of us hear that what is introduced as ‘improvements’ often adds work without obvious benefit. For a community built on human and organizational learning, hearing “initiative overload” or lack of “buy-in” is more than frustrating – it’s a signal that our principles aren’t yet shaping how work is designed, making future investment harder to secure.

We know investment in legal compliance is viewed as necessary. What we are going to tackle in this paper is seeing where we can perform beyond compliance, performance that the organization will view as both desirable and valuable. This becomes the means by which you can secure your case for more investment.

What follows will help you navigate the interrelated subjects in the table above by using questions to guide us toward value creation.

Why Human Performance Capability Starts With Better Questions:

• The questions we ask shape both the problem we'll find and the solution we bring.

• When we focus our questions on compliance activities, the answer often looks like more activity.

• When we focus our questions on where to find more value, our solutions will reveal more value.

These questions aren’t a communication technique; they are a strategic mechanism for shifting organizations toward seeing the human operating system that grows Capability.

What others say about human performance (as an operating system).

Deloitte, MIT CISR, and PwC are all using Human Performance language and methods to grow capacity through trust and employee experience. This is an opportunity for us to leverage their thinking in our space! To strengthen our business case, we must widen our lens beyond incidents and actions to the organizational conditions that create value. The research below shows where ROI is already hiding in everyday work.

What Human Performance Capability Makes Visible

Source	Financial Impact / ROI
Employee Experience (MIT CISR, PwC)	Investing in employee experience drivers could yield 12.6% of total revenue. Targeted investment in key drivers can yield 4.9% of total turnover.
Trust & Psychological Safety (Deloitte, HBR)	Workers in high-trust companies are 50% less likely to leave, 180% more likely to be motivated, and 140% more likely to take on extra responsibilities.
Employee Commitment & Retention (Deloitte, PwC)	A one-point positive shift in employee satisfaction ratings is associated with a 52% difference in profitability and an 8% difference in market valuation.
Constructive Culture (Human Synergistics)	Shifting a culture from Defensive to Constructive reversed a $40 million deficit into a $7 million surplus in four years for one large medical centre, with its budget growing from $600 million to over $900 million.
Operational Learning (HBR, Human Synergistics)	Teams that apply design thinking methods (which require iterative learning and rehearsal) secured the buy-in of multiple groups and reduced costs alongside improved value creation for employees and customers.

We must continue to frame our work as improving incident and error performance; that’s the baseline, and we stand on the shoulders of those before us. Our foundations are solid. To grow influence, we must also show Human Performance as a capability that increases value.

This paper outlines how to:

• Add a compelling value proposition to the safety narrative

• Strengthen harm/error reduction rather than dilute it

• Position yourself as a value-creation partner that reduces friction, increases trust, and grows capability. 

To achieve that, we need to ask different questions of ourselves, our leaders, and our systems.

The invitation: design systems where people speak earlier, problems become visible sooner, and leaders invest in changes that genuinely make work easier, safer, more effective, and more profitable.

Edgar Schein, business theorist, psychologist, professor, and foundational researcher in the discipline of organizational behavior, reminds us of something incredibly practical:

If you ask a question you already know the answer to, you’re not learning. 

So, let’s use this as a turning point. If value is the “problem,” let's frame our questions to find it and return to the challenges our community identified: initiative overload, low engagement, ROI, and executive buy-in.

We need to treat these as symptoms of a value vs. volume conflict, with the knowledge that: People engage with what helps them succeed and disengage from what doesn’t.

To find the remedy, it’s essential to separate:

Volume problems: There’s too much, too fast, too confusing, from

Value problems: “This isn’t helping me do the work any better.”

The following 3 questions cut straight through the symptoms of overload, engagement, ROI, and buy-in.

3 Strategic Questions

1. “What problem in the work does this help people solve that they couldn’t solve before?”

If the benefit is invisible, the initiative becomes invisible as well.

2. “What changes in the work when people participate?”

If participation doesn’t lead to support, learning, or easier execution, people will stop participating.

3. “When things are busy, what still gets done and what gets dropped?”

The answer reveals the organization’s lived hierarchy of usefulness.

These questions are not academic. They are Leadership, Investment, and Governance questions. They are deeply practical; you can use them tomorrow with a frontline team or an executive board.

Seeing the Real Problem: A Case Study in Value vs. Volume

Applying those three questions revealed that the organisation didn’t value the safety activities in a compliance-based approach as they generated paperwork, not performance, i.e., we had volume over value, which meant the real problems were hidden, disguised in everyday work. 

What happens to a project where recurring harm and repeated investigations created a “holding pattern” locked in paperwork? The following case study illustrates what happens when organizations shift from compliance-driven activity to Human Performance Capability in practice. The learning here is not about the incident; it’s about how the questions revealed the real problem AND the solution.

The Situation

A remote construction project experienced multiple serious and fatal accidents involving trucks on mountain roads. Each investigation, audit, observation, and inspection had followed the same formula:

• Reinforce existing controls

• Retrain workers

• Update procedures

• Run more observations

• Tighten compliance expectations

All of it came from a place of care. But none of it changed the work.

Dashboards showed completion of training, audits, toolbox talks, and corrective actions. But accidents continued, because the underlying system remained untouched.

The organization was trying to see a business problem through a safety lens. So, we applied safety tools the way we always had. What we needed to see was that safety is an outcome of how we run the business. 

We cannot separate safety and business culture, just as we cannot, should not, separate safety outcomes from business outcomes.

Here is precisely where Einstein’s reminder matters:

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

So, we applied the three strategic questions.

1. “What problem in the work does this help people solve that they couldn’t solve before?”

When we reviewed the existing controls, the answer was uncomfortable but clear: reinforcing the controls didn’t solve anything the workforce hadn’t already been trying to manage.

The hazards, gradients, vehicle capability, and driving conditions remained unchanged. The work did not become easier, safer, more transparent, or more supported.

In other words, nothing new was being solved. So nothing was going to change.

This is the defining marker of a volume over value problem.

 2. “What changes in the work when people participate?”

We reviewed every investigation, audit, and inspection.

The pattern was again unmistakable:

• Participation created paperwork, not support.

• Audits repeated the same findings.

• Investigations reinforced the same controls.

No new thinking meant no new solutions, no constraints were removed, and no friction was reduced. The work itself and the organizational understanding did not change; only the volume of activity changed.

A perfect example of activity without impact. Again, clear evidence of a value problem.

 3. “When things are busy, what still gets done and what gets dropped?”

When the schedule or resources tightened:

• Audits were cancelled

• Inspections were shortened

• Refresher briefings were pushed aside

The very activities meant to “improve safety” were the first to disappear.

Why? These activities did not meaningfully contribute to success.

People don’t drop what is valuable. They drop what they experience as extra.

Another indicator of our value problem.

What the Questions Revealed

For the first time, the organisation could see the truth:

• The issue wasn’t worker behaviour.

• It wasn’t a lack of awareness or attention.

• It wasn’t weak compliance.

The issue was a system built on compliance and volume. Compliance tools unintentionally eroded trust and locked down capability. We needed a human performance solution where organizational values and processes powered better thinking and unlocked capability. 

A system that required volumes of transactions had stolen the willingness of the organisation to collaborate, contribute and otherwise increase capability.

The real problem was how the organisation collaborated in planning, design, logistics, contract specifications, and road engineering. 

We had been examining human error when we needed to generate capability through systemic work design.

So, we focused on Capability instead of Compliance.

Once the organisation accepted that there was a value problem, new thinking emerged. We reframed the problem as a collective Human Performance issue.

Now we looked internally and externally at how we collectively contributed to work design.

This reframe led to insights never revealed before:

The Results (the part we can say publicly)

• Road designs were improved to match the needs of suppliers AND clients.

• Construction vehicles could access remote locations, so the right equipment and materials replaced workarounds.

• Material delivery became safer and more efficient.

• Productivity increased significantly.

A $6.8m project generated an additional $2.8m in profit, and most importantly, the repeated fatal accidents stopped. All through the redesigning of work.

In short, value appeared when collaboration replaced compliance, and capability replaced activity.

What This Case Study Shows

The three strategic questions act like an X-ray:

• They reveal whether an initiative creates value or just volume.

• They expose whether the system supports or merely audits work.

• They highlight where new thinking is required.

The lesson is not about trucks. It’s about understanding where improvement really lives.

Here’s the change these powerful questions brought:

We perceived safety activities as tasks; they didn’t change how work was performed, and they created a self-reinforcing loop: “Work is dangerous, this is how we work, nothing we do fundamentally changes that.” 

When accidents occurred, the Cultural Operating System didn’t have a way to access better thinking; even though the knowledge existed, it was locked down. 

Fresh questions unlocked that knowledge, brought different thinking, and we reset the bar on where value was to be found.

What changed here was not the introduction of a better safety programme or more control. This wasn’t a compliance improvement; it was a capability shift.

The organization strengthened its ability to understand work, adapt to conditions, and support people to succeed. Performance improved, and safety followed. This is what we mean by Human Performance Capability in practice.

Human Performance Capability as a Driver of ROI and Performance

Tracking volume is not the same as creating value. We’ve spent years counting inputs and outputs, but leaders invest in the part that converts input into performance. That conversion comes from contribution, problem-solving, and learning. This is Human Performance Capability, the capability unlocked within the organisation’s cultural operating system that converts learning into performance.

If you are looking for ROI, ask the questions that find value, so that you can convert learning into capability, and capability into performance.

Takeaway: Here are the 3 questions you can use immediately to shift any leadership conversation toward value, capability, and performance.

3 Strategic Questions

1. “What problem in the work does this help people solve that they couldn’t solve before?”

2. “What changes in the work when people participate?”

3. “When things are busy, what still gets done and what gets dropped?”

Remember, the answers reveal the organisation’s lived hierarchy of usefulness, and usefulness translates to value!

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Andy Barker works with leaders to increase the influence and impact of their safety efforts by making complex ideas practical, human, and easy to apply. Drawing on practitioner experience across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, Andy has helped organizations across very different starting points, from low-trust, high-incident environments to already strong safety performers, strengthen collaboration, ownership, and outcomes, with safety contributing directly to business performance.

He is the founder of OrgTree.me and a regular contributor to CHOLearning.

In 2024, Andy was awarded CHOLearning’s first Excellence in Applied Learning for demonstrating how theory becomes impact through real-world application.

Andy’s work focuses on ownership, trust, and the everyday leadership behaviours that turn safety into performance.

Co-Contributors:

Laurin Mooney, BSN, MS, is on a mission to help people apply High Reliability Organizing in their work. Using her love for making complex ideas understandable and actionable, she translated the 5 Hallmarks of HRO into 9 Questions, 9 Actions, and 7 Amazing Attitudes that anyone can use in any work. 

Her new book, “High Reliability in Action,” guides readers on a 10-week journey applying these “How to” frameworks. She also innovated Speaking IN®, a science-based model to promote effective open upward communication in hierarchies. This replacement for “speaking up” fosters inclusive leadership, psychological safety, and employee engagement, all of which are critical for success and safety in complex, high-risk work.

Ashley Goulding is a dynamic leader in organizational effectiveness, change management, and workforce development, with a proven track record of driving strategic transformation across industries, including manufacturing, energy, and technology. As the former Director of Organization Effectiveness at Novelis, Ashley led global strategies to enhance employee engagement, high-performing teams, and change capabilities. She developed and implemented a global change management framework, led company-wide engagement surveys, and built recognition programs that align with business goals and culture.

Ashley has also held senior leadership roles at McKinsey & Company, where she advised Fortune 300 executives on operational excellence and cultural transformation, achieving over $600M in combined efficiency and performance improvements. She was instrumental in launching McKinsey’s Digital Capability Centers in North America, overseeing multimillion-dollar innovation projects and delivering over 200 tailored leadership and digital training programs. With a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Georgia Tech, Ashley blends technical expertise with people-centric strategies to unlock lasting impact.

Liz Peck is a Process Safety Human Performance Manager for Chevron Phillips Chemical Company (CPChem). She has spent 22 years of her career with CPChem – 17 years in Corporate Communications and nearly 3 years as a certified Change Manager in the company’s Strategic Execution and Enablement office. She has led communications and change management efforts of many initiatives through the years regarding employee culture and safety, and most recently Human Performance. She is currently responsible for growing and sustaining the Human Performance strategy for non-manufacturing areas.

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Disclosure of AI Use: This attestation was developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools.

Tool(s) used: NotebookLM (Google Labs), ChatGPT (OpenAI)

Purpose(s): research, editing, SEO

Human review/editing: All content was reviewed and finalized by CHOLearning staff prior to publication