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Research · 2026

What great businesses do differently.

Data from 969 Australasian businesses shows five areas where high performers pull away from the rest. The gaps are large, they're growing, and every one of them can be closed.

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  • 969Australasian organisations in the STAR dataset
  • 176businesses surveyed since 2020, the focus of this paper
  • 19%more strategically aligned: employers in high performers vs low
  • 25%greater satisfaction with financial performance in high performers

Published 2026 by HR Coach Australasia, the team behind STAR Workplace. Based on STAR Workplace Program data.

Every business wants to be better than just good. They want to be great.

Owners invest time, money and energy into building something that performs: results for customers, financial returns for stakeholders, and a place people genuinely want to work. And yet, despite similar effort and intention, some businesses consistently outperform others. The gap between them is rarely about luck.

HR Coach Australasia has been measuring this question for more than two decades. What actually separates high-performing businesses from low-performing ones? Not what owners think, hope or assume, but what the data actually shows.

The answer is remarkably consistent. Across nearly 1,000 Australasian small to medium businesses, the same patterns emerge time and again. High performers do specific things differently from low performers, and the gaps between them are measurable, significant and, critically, actionable.

What has changed since 2020

For this paper we focus on the businesses surveyed since 2020, a period that tested businesses in ways few could have anticipated: COVID-19, the labour market shifts that followed, and the new operating environment businesses now navigate. What the data reveals is both encouraging and sobering.

Encouraging, because the markers of high performance are clear and consistent. Sobering, because the gaps between high and low performers have, in several critical areas, grown larger than they were in 2018.

Employers in high-performing organisations are 19% more strategically aligned than their counterparts in low-performing businesses. This translates into 25% greater satisfaction with financial performance. High performers also report their teams are more productive, more accountable, better led and more culturally aligned.

Across the five areas where the gap is widest, the average difference between high and low performers exceeds 40 percentage points. These are not marginal differences. They represent fundamentally different ways of running a business.

The five biggest gaps

Percentage-point gap between high- and low-performing businesses surveyed since 2020.

  1. Efficiency of the management team44%
  2. Employee productivity measures43%
  3. Accountability and ownership41%
  4. Quality of HR planning39%
  5. Varied culture within the organisation39%

Gap #1 · 44% gap

Efficiency of the management team

The single largest differentiator in the entire dataset.

This is the number-one differentiator in the post-2020 dataset, and it has been the number-one finding since 2018. The gap has not closed. If anything, the expectations placed on management teams have intensified, and the divide between businesses that have invested in their managers and those that have not is wider than ever.

The management team is the conduit between the business owner and the work that gets done. They turn strategy into action, maximise performance, minimise waste and, when things go sideways, keep the wheels turning. In low-performing businesses this is not done effectively, and the burden falls directly on the owner.

Since 2020 the challenge has grown more complex. Managers are now expected to lead across flexible and hybrid arrangements, support employee wellbeing, navigate constant change and still deliver results. Most were never trained to do any of this. They were promoted because they were good at their technical role, not because they were equipped to lead.

Gallup's research puts the scale of the problem in context: 70% of the variance in team engagement is attributable to the manager, and its 2025 workplace report found global manager engagement had fallen to 27%, a new low. Businesses that invest in their management teams are not just doing the right thing by their people; they are making a sound financial decision.

When the management team is not working well, the owner becomes the bottleneck. Every decision, every problem, every people issue lands on their desk.

What high performers do differently

High performers don't just manage individual performance; they invest in making the management team work as a unit. They create deliberate alignment around shared goals, clear communication channels and mutual accountability. A management team that trusts one another, constructively challenges one another and commits to shared outcomes will consistently outperform one filled with talented but misaligned individuals.

Gap #2 · 43% gap

Employee productivity measures

High performers measure outcomes; low performers measure activity.

This gap appears in the top five for the first time since the original research, and its emergence tells a clear story about what the post-2020 working environment has exposed in many businesses.

High-performing businesses don't just expect productivity; they measure it in ways that are meaningful, visible and understood by the people doing the work. Low performers either don't measure productivity at all or measure the wrong things: hours logged, emails answered, tasks ticked off. Activity is not the same as output, and output is not the same as impact.

Every serious sports team keeps score. Players know what winning looks like, when they're ahead, when they're behind and what they need to do to shift the result. In low-performing businesses the scoreboard is missing, wrong or visible only to the owner.

Flexible and hybrid work has made this more pressing. When employees aren't physically present, the old proxies (being at your desk, looking busy) are gone. Businesses that had never built genuine productivity measures found themselves exposed. High performers, who had already moved to outcome-based measurement, largely didn't miss a beat.

You cannot improve what you do not measure. High performers know their score at every point of the game.

What high performers do differently

High performers work with employees to define what good performance looks like for each role, in terms of outputs and outcomes, not activities. The measures are co-created, not imposed, so employees understand them and buy into them. They are tracked regularly, discussed openly and linked to the strategic goals of the business.

Gap #3 · 41% gap

Accountability and ownership

In low performers accountability is imposed; in high performers it is owned.

The data separates two related ideas: employees being held accountable for their results (a 42% gap) and individual accountability more broadly (a 40% gap). Both point to the same underlying dynamic.

In low-performing businesses, accountability is imposed. Owners and managers set targets, chase results and discipline when things fall short. When things go wrong, blame shifts sideways or downward; when things go right, credit is claimed from above. Nobody truly owns their outcomes. This is the parent-child dynamic, and it is as common as it is costly.

In high-performing businesses, accountability is owned. Employees propose their own performance measures aligned with the strategy, self-manage their outcomes and take action when things are off track. When setbacks occur, they own the problem. When success occurs, the manager acknowledges it. This adult-adult dynamic is one of the clearest hallmarks of a high-performing culture.

Post-2020, hybrid work and changing workforce expectations have eroded traditional command-and-control mechanisms. Businesses that had already built genuine ownership were more resilient. Those that relied on imposition found that when the physical environment changed, so did the behaviour.

In high-performing businesses, employees don't own their jobs because they are told to. They own them because the business has invested in building that ownership.

What high performers do differently

High performers invest time in helping employees understand the connection between their role and the strategy of the business. They use structured conversations to align on performance expectations, check in regularly on progress and create a safe environment for employees to raise issues early rather than hide them.

Gap #4 · 39% gap

Quality of HR planning

High performers treat people planning as a strategic function, not an admin task.

This is the least glamorous item on the list. It doesn't feature in leadership keynotes. And yet it sits firmly in the top five gaps between high- and low-performing businesses in Australasia.

For most SME owners, HR planning conjures images of paperwork, compliance and policies. That's understandable, but incomplete. Strategic HR planning is about having the right people in the right roles at the right time, with the capability to execute the strategy: workforce planning, succession, skills development and retention, treated with the same rigour as financial planning.

You wouldn't start construction without architectural plans. Yet most small and medium businesses build their most important asset, their workforce, without anything resembling a plan. They hire reactively, develop ad hoc and only think about succession when a key person has already resigned.

Since 2020, labour market volatility, high turnover and genuine skills shortages have exposed businesses with poor HR planning. High performers plan for their people the way they plan for their finances: with structure, foresight and intent. The result is lower turnover, higher capability, smoother succession and a workforce ready for growth rather than playing catch-up.

High performers treat HR planning as a strategic function. Low performers treat it as administration.

What high performers do differently

High performers have a documented HR plan that sits alongside their business strategy. It covers workforce requirements for the next 12 to 36 months, capability gaps, succession for key roles and planned investment in learning and development. Critically, it is reviewed and updated regularly, not filed away and forgotten.

Gap #5 · 39% gap

Varied culture within the organisation

Varied culture is the silent performance killer.

Culture is the pattern of behaviour that people, teams and departments demonstrate regularly, particularly under pressure. It isn't the values on the wall. It's what actually happens when the owner isn't in the room.

Varied culture, where different parts of the business operate to different, misaligned norms, is one of the most consistently destructive forces in a low-performing organisation. It creates friction, miscommunication and inconsistency. Customers notice it, employees are frustrated by it, and the owner spends an inordinate amount of time managing its consequences.

High performers have an aligned and adaptive culture. That doesn't mean everyone is the same; it means everyone is pointed in the same direction. Since 2020, culture can no longer be transmitted through proximity alone. It has to be deliberately built and maintained.

HR Coach's longitudinal research has identified the core culture drivers for managers and employees. Low-performing businesses score poorly on customer focus among employees and planning quality among managers. These are systemic deficits that, left unaddressed, compound over time.

Culture is not what you say your business stands for. It is what your people do when no one is watching.

What high performers do differently

High performers measure their culture rather than assuming it. They use structured surveys to understand what employees and managers actually experience, benchmark the results against other Australasian businesses and take targeted, sustained action. Culture improvement is led by the owner and management team, not delegated to HR.

Self-assessment

How does your business compare?

Rate your business on each statement from 1 to 5, where 5 means you're a role model and 1 means there's significant work to do. Be honest: the aim is to flush out the good, the bad and the opportunities.

1Our management team works together efficiently and effectively. They trust each other, communicate openly, commit to shared decisions and hold each other accountable for results.
2We have clear, meaningful productivity measures for every role in the business. Employees understand what great performance looks like and can track their own progress against it.
3Our employees own their roles and results. They set their own targets in line with the business strategy and take accountability for outcomes, without needing to be chased.
4We have a clear HR plan that aligns our people strategy with our business strategy. It covers capability gaps, succession and planned investment in our people for the next 12 to 36 months.
5Our culture is consistent and aligned across all teams and departments. Everyone understands our direction and demonstrates the same core behaviours, whether the owner is present or not.

Answer all five to see your score.

Closing the gaps

How to become (or stay) a high-performing business

These are the actions and solutions that work for each of the five areas. Your STAR provider can help with each one.

Management team: efficient and effective

  • Build manager capability through Everything DiSC Management: direction and delegation, motivation, development and managing upwards.
  • Assess your management team as a unit, not just as individuals.
  • Use Work of Leaders to build leadership capability across vision, alignment and execution.
  • Use The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team to build alignment, trust and shared accountability across your management group.
  • Benchmark management culture scores against Australasian SMEs using STAR Workplace.

Employee productivity measures

  • Co-create meaningful, outcome-based measures for every role in the business.
  • Implement a Performance Feedback Matrix to link individual outputs to business results.
  • Use STAR Workplace benchmarking to establish baseline productivity and track improvement over time.

Accountability and ownership

  • Use the 5 Effective Conversations framework to build regular, structured dialogue between managers and employees.
  • Link position descriptions to strategy, and use Career Monitor to support employee ownership of development.
  • Benchmark your culture using STAR Workplace to identify where accountability gaps exist across teams.

Quality of HR planning

  • Complete a Business Growth plan to align your people strategy with your business direction.
  • Conduct a regular HR Business Assessment to identify process and systems gaps.
  • Implement succession planning tools so key roles are covered and internal talent is identified and developed.

Consistent culture throughout the business

  • Measure culture across all sites, teams and departments using STAR Workplace and benchmark against Australasian SMEs.
  • Use The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team to assess and build alignment.
  • Lead culture improvement from the owner and management team. It cannot be delegated.
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