7 Tips to improve company alignment

When it comes to increasing employee engagement, you need to think about many different strategies and ideas. While you need to ensure that your employees are motivated, challenged and given an appropriate amount of autonomy, company alignment is much more important to consider.

Company goal alignment has been a hot topic as of late, as more and more experts agree that it can increase employee engagement and maximize company profits. Implementing effective goal alignment throughout your organization should be one of your biggest priorities – are you prepared?

What is company alignment?

This term can mean different things to different people, but at its most basic, company goal alignment is all about shared, well communicated values. Some people believe that it must get everyone on the same page, and others stress the importance of looking at the bigger picture. No matter what, a strong sense of alignment is vital when it comes to helping your team stay focused and doing their best work.

At its most basic, goal alignment refers to an employees’ sense of understanding of your company’s goals, values and missions. They need to intrinsically understand these key parts of your corporate values in order to align themselves with your goals. Once they fully understand your goals, they can truly work towards your mutual success.

Why should you implement a goal alignment strategy?

While implementing a goal alignment strategy has many benefits for your business, here are the ones that might provide the greatest impact.

Goal alignment:

• Will improve your operational execution.
• It will allow you to move quickly from planning to execution stages.
• Increases employee engagement and overall morale. This will improve your rates of employee retention.
• Creates a sense of ownership and autonomy over your company’s success.
• Boosts your productivity and improves your bottom line.

Simply put, when people feel aligned with your goals, they feel like they are a key part of your success. This can be the difference between a profitable business and a failed venture.

Seven key strategies to increase organizational alignment

Now that you know just how important organizational alignment is for your success, it is time to put it into action. Utilize these 7 strategies in order to reach your goals.

1. Take a key role in communicating company strategy

   Have you ever played the children’s game “Telephone”? By the time the message gets to the end of a long line of people, its content has likely been drastically altered beyond recognition. Miscommunication costs businesses more than $37 billion USD each year – you don’t want to add to that total. Be direct, make sure everyone understands your plans, and ensure that you communicate your vision and goals to all staff members.

2. Connect every day tasks and efforts to long term goals

   Every aspect of your daily business should connect back to your long term mission statement and over all goals. This allows managers and employees to see how their every day work helps the success of the company – and improves their long term career prospects.

3. Encourage all employees to commit to your strategies

   The more that your employees engage and interact with your goals, the more likely it is that they will stay committed to them in the long run. During meetings and performance reviews, remember to encourage commitment and remind everyone of goals and their own roles in achieving them.

4. Consider alternative meeting schedules

   For many companies, the weekly meeting and check in is the norm – but are these having their intended goals? Company alignment expert Andre Lavoie encourages taking a different approach.

   “With a clear and consistent view of goals and where employees stand through the company’s hierarchy, weekly meetings and quarterly gatherings won’t be necessary in order to restate those goals. Integrating goals into everyday life is enough to keep the meetings at bay. Most importantly, it ensures employees don’t get caught up in small tasks and miss the larger picture.”

5. Recognize and reward your employees’ strengths

   A recent Gallup study shows that encouraging strengths (rather than focusing on negatives) has a very positive effect on productivity. In fact, positive employee feedback was shown to increase productivity by at least 12.5%! Focus on their strengths, compliment them rather than criticize, and find ways to align them with your company’s goals.

6. Transparency is key

   Maintaining a sense of transparency throughout your entire organization will allow your employees to see the productivity of their managers and vice versa. Overall transparency can translate to a healthier and more productive work environment for everyone, improving overall engagement.

7. Encourage transparency from the top

   “Maintaining transparency throughout the entire company can allow leaders to see the productivity of employees and ensure everyone is working towards the same goals,” Lavoie says.

   Transparency also translates to a much healthier and efficient work environment.

When implemented in a smart manner, employee goal alignment can be one of the most important keys to success for any start up or corporation. Encourage your employees to stay committed to your shared goals and they will reward you with higher levels of engagement and improved retention. All of this will lead to higher productivity – and a stronger bottom line.

Are you interested in learning more about company alignment? Do you have any experiences with this subject that you can share with other readers? Join the conversation and share this article across your social networks.