5 Steps to Align Employees to Business Goals

It would be such a shame to invest time and effort in hiring the right people for your business and not be able to reap the rewards.

Many small businesses indeed suffer from this exact scenario, where their employees are not following laid down processes or not delivering the value you expect.

This is a classic case of employee-business misalignment.

It occurs when your employees don’t understand or support the goals and values of your business.

It is a common problem today because CEOs and business owners always assume that everyone is on board just because a memo was sent or they held a meeting.

According to a Harvard Business Review study, 95% of employees do not understand or are unaware of company strategy.

Yet, these are the same employees that carry out much of the strategy implementation in your business or company, how can they succeed?

How to Know Whether your Employees Are Not Aligned with Your Business Goals

If you have any doubt, about whether your business suffers from employee misalignment, here are a few indicators you should watch out for: –

• Employees show a general lack of motivation
• Low employee productivity
• Poor overall performance
• Overall workplace confusion – Wasted time and misdirected efforts
• Lower employee engagement
• Inefficiency in work delivery

Five (5) Steps to Get your Employees Aligned to your Company Goals

I think you will agree that the way your business manages its employees will determine how much value you can gain from them.

It is just as important if not more important than hiring the right people for your small business.

As you align your employees with your company’s vision, goals, and values, you’re aligning their personal goals and interests with those of the organization.

This allows them to see how helping your company achieve its goals can help them achieve theirs.

Because we know how much work has to go into this process to make it work, we’ve simplified it into these five (5) steps: –

1. Clearly Define Your Business Goals, Vision and Strategy
2. Sync Business Goals to Employee Goals
3. Breakdown Priorities into Measurable Tasks
4. Open a clear line of communication
5. Measure and Collect Feedback

1. Clearly Define Your Business Goals, Vision and Strategy

The process of alignment starts with the business owner or management clearly defining the vision, goals and strategies of the business.

This gives a sense of direction to business and helps employees better connect their day-to-day activities with the purpose of the business.

2.  Sync Business Goals to Employee Goals

Usually, this is done as part of the onboarding process for new employees, but when it isn’t done, business owners can ask their employees to write down their personal goals (short and long-term).

After you determine their five top goals, you should be able to link these goals to their roles and your business objectives.

Say the goal of an employee is to become an expert in his field in the next 5 years. 

You should be able to link his goal of becoming a top salesperson in your industry to your business goal of multiplying your sales.

Show the employee how helping your business achieve its sales target can make him one of the top salespeople in the industry.

3. Breakdown Priorities into Measurable Tasks

Now that you’ve made the connection between their goals and the business’s, the next step is to break down those goals into daily or weekly tasks or action steps.

To avoid overwhelming your employee, focus on only a few top priorities and create clear action steps and tasks you can track to measure employee performance.

4. Open a clear line of communication

A clear line of communication between the business and the employee is critical if this alignment must work. 

When your employees clearly understand your business goals and strategy, they are better empowered to bring value to your business.

A clear line of communication is your best bet to provide that understanding. 

Scheduling one-on-one sessions with employees on a bi-weekly or monthly basis is an effective way to both keep tabs on what is happening; their challenges and triumphs, as well as establish a personal relationship and sense of interest in their personal growth.

5. Collect Feedback and Review

Rather than a one-time event, this process should be ongoing and measure how well the employee has met their personal and business goals. 

Information gotten from this exercise can be used to review and adjust company goals and objectives, better communicate and measure their performance.

An employee that is not committed to his or her personal goals cannot be committed to that of your business, no matter how well you preach about it. 

That’s why getting the right employees is important.

But without showing them the connection between achieving their goals and that of your business there would certainly be a disconnect or sometimes a conflict between the two.

Do you have another way to determine when your employee’s goal is not aligned with that of your small business? please share below.

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