With employees working from home, or isolated at the office, companies are realizing that keeping everyone aligned is crucial to performance and growth.
Company vision, mission statements, and corporate value discussions are often the first casualties of a workplace during times of crisis. They can be seen as nice-to-have but optional projects. Or worse, checkbox exercises that only live in company slidedecks and wall posters. In fact, these are critical, culture-defining touchstones that help a company and its employees align their purpose.
Now more than ever, alignment can help employees who may feel adrift in these uncertain times. You can help them feel more connected, more purpose-fuelled, and a part of a like-minded work community. Help your team feel more aligned with their work, and you are also aligning their performance with your growth trajectory. Let’s dig deeper…
What is employee alignment?
Alignment is another way of describing how synchronized your employees are with your wider company goals. Is everyone moving in the same direction? Does each employee share your vision? Are they all working with the same purpose? Employee alignment can mean different things to different people. At its most basic level, an aligned organization is one where everyone is on the same page. However, most people take this further to look at how much employees understand their place in the company and how they contribute to its broader aims.
Just one in 10 firms are happy with current levels of employee engagement, according to CBI. One reason why they may not have the desired level of engagement is that their employees don't understand how their day-to-day jobs contributes to the business' success. This leads to low levels of motivation and morale, as they feel that what they do doesn't have any real impact. They are a random, replaceable cog in a machine they don’t quite believe in.
Alignment is essential for your employees' sense of self-worth and personal success. They will only feel successful if they know they are making a difference — not just making a living.
When an employee is unmotivated, they don't produce as much - meaning a lack of alignment can have a significant impact on your bottom line. In fact, companies that have high employee engagement were found to be 21% more profitable in a survey by Gallup.
How do you create employee alignment?
If you want everyone to understand their place in your company, you need to make sure employees appreciate how each of their tasks contributes to your organization's goals. This means setting a clear mission statement for your organization - without one, there's no way you can align anyone's tasks to it.
When you assign projects to teams, explain how that project will have an impact on revenue or any other goals your organization might have. Ensure company-wide communication regularly explains how different teams are having an impact on the organization's aims, and mention every team in these communications.
Rewarding alignment with recognition and incentives
Another way to ensure employee alignment is through incentives. Rewarding tasks that have a clear impact on organizational goals is a great way to reinforce the message that your employees are contributing to the success of the whole business.
It's also necessary to incentivise both individual and team efforts. One of the most important aspects of alignment is that everyone knows their place within their team, and that teams know their place within the whole organization. By rewarding both individual and team efforts, you'll help employees make that link between their own performance and the wider group's.
When communicating big rewards wins, you should let the whole company know about the prize, and explain exactly how that team or individual's efforts have contributed to your organisational goals. Regular communication is crucial to employee alignment, and incentives give you an excellent excuse to discuss project wins at frequent intervals without sounding forced. It also helps employees feel appreciated.
Creating engagement in every workspace
At Power2Motivate, we understand every aspect of what motivates and engages your employees. We offer a number of different rewards and incentives programs to help boost morale, productivity and revenue at your organization. Our custom-built rewards platforms can incorporate a social news section, so you have the perfect channel to show even at-home employees how much you care about their great work. Contact us today to find out how we can help keep your team members focused and motivated, even while they work remotely. We can set up a demo of our highly configurable engagement platform, so you can see for yourself just how impactful it can be.