I Can See Clearly Now the Rain is Gone

To be engaged, employees must see that what they do matters.  They must see where they fit into the puzzle – the bigger picture of where your company is going.  They must see that they are a critical piece.  They must see that their purpose and your company’s purpose are aligned.  They must see that they are contributing and the business will not be as successful without them.  As a  leader, it’s your job to help employees on this journey.

Success Factors, a leader in cloud-based Human Capital Management software, reports a mere seven percent of employees understand their company’s business goals and strategies, and what’s expected of them in order to help achieve company business goals.  The truth?  This statistic is both alarming and  pathetic.

If employees do not understand the big picture and see how their piece adds to and completes the puzzle, they will be disengaged.  They will arrive at work every day and simply go through the motions, doing what they have to do to get by.  Imagine the negative impact this has on productivity, retention, customer satisfaction, quality defects and most importantly – the granddaddy of them all – profitable revenue growth.

How do you give employees a clear line of sight between their job and the company’s purpose?  Goal alignment.  Simply put, goal alignment involves ensuring that every person in your company has goals that support their chain of command all the way up to the CEO and that support the company’s goals.  This process should take place several months prior to the start of your company’s fiscal year and it is fluid.  If there is a major event during the year that necessitates your company moving in a different direction, goals need to be rewritten to support the new direction.

Goal alignment ensures that everyone is marching in the same direction and is only doing work that supports the company’s purpose.  It’s how employees see line of sight between what they do every day and where the company is going.  It’s how employees see that what they do matters.  It’s how employees see that they are a critical element to your company’s success.  It’s how you engage a workforce.