Imagine assembling a team of random people with no goal or vision in mind. No matter how skilled they are, they can’t achieve anything without purpose or motivation. That’s how important a company’s visions or objectives are.
Employee alignment involves the up-down process of selling the company’s vision to employees. It is the level to which employees believe and cherish the organization’s goals and visions. Coupled with a clear definition of the worker’s role in fulfilling the company’s goals. Employee alignment is not a one-time thing; it’s a process that matures through constant engagement with managers and employees.
Beyond its importance to the success of an organization, employee alignment helps give meaning to employee roles. Staff understand the reason behind tasks and can put in their all to see it materialize. When employees feel their work is vital and recognized, loyalty increases as staff don’t see themselves as cogs in a wheel. Research reveals that employee alignment improves employee engagement and productivity.
Employees disengagement occurs when there’s a lack of communication and recognition, poor leadership, and little growth opportunities. This can lead to low staff morale and directly affect productivity. The earlier this is managed, the better the organization’s chances of achieving the expected output. Here’s how to realign with employees who get off track.
Clarify Task Priorities
One way to achieve employee alignment is by observing their schedules and routines. This way, you can see where their priorities are wrong and correct them. It is not enough to spell out the company’s vision every morning, it must be embedded in the processes. Leaders also need to prioritize living the vision in their daily routines.
For clarity of task priority, there has to be an analysis of the organization’s tasks. What are the managers and employees prioritizing? Does it reflect the company’s goals and visions? When tasks are optimized, you allocate time to what truly matters.
You can then save time, increase output, and become more efficient. Prioritization helps reduce stress and anxiety. When you know the most crucial task is being sorted, you get more clarity on how to handle the others. It thus becomes easier to avoid procrastination and focus on your most important task of the day.
Utilize Ones-to-Ones Effectively
Communication is a very critical component of employee alignment. Managers need to learn how to carry all team members along promptly. But more importantly, by using the ones-to-ones approach. This way, employees can ask questions and clarify any ambiguity.
Frequent meetings need to be held for employees to grasp the company goals fully. Never rely too much on group dissemination of information. It is easy for messages to get lost and watered down in transmission. Research also suggests that miscommunication is responsible for about $37million losses yearly.
For organizations with branches across different locations, you can leverage modern communication technology to maintain frequent personal meetings with staff. Rather than incurring the cost of having a physical meeting, you can achieve the same result by making international calls. Whatever your business needs are, flexible international calling plans cater to them.
Invest in Learning and Development
One way to realign employees is by investing in learning and development. By creating avenues for staff to acquire skills, they better understand their roles and their importance to the organization. Organizing seminars, encouraging online courses, pairing staff with mentors can automatically realign sidetracked employees. Training also helps workers appreciate the organizational strategy and its impact on their jobs.
One reason for employee disengagement is stagnation or slow career growth. Learning and development help employees improve themselves and automatically increase their loyalty. They become eager to repay the trust by seeking avenues to express their newly gained skill. Training also helps organizations keep top talent, increase job satisfaction, employee morale, and productivity.
Recognize a Hopeless Situation
The goal for all businesses is to build an organization that acquires and retains the best talents. All businesses want to create a sustainable environment that fosters trust, loyalty, and productivity. Sometimes it might not be enough to stop some employees from leaving. If all measures to realign the employees prove fruitless, it is best to disengage such an employee.
It is not every time your realignment plan will work, and you must prepare for a time when even after expending resources, it just won’t work. Just be ready to cut your losses and move on at such points before such employees negatively influence workplace harmony.
A System That Works
Employee alignment often can be the difference between the results different companies get. Ensure you consistently find a system of onboarding new employees that align with the company’s visions and goals while creating avenues for their learning and development. Ensure your company’s vision is ingrained in the organization’s operational procedures. Rather than sharing the vision, embody and live it.
