Great Information: Ignoring This Issue Could Ruin Your Company As a leader, you probably have two big questions: How are my people executing on my strategy, and are my new resources onboarding into this strategy? The answer to both of these questions lies within your organization’s goal alignment. Companies of any size that focus on staying aligned with goals can operate much like a lean startup, with everyone on the same page. However, we all know how hard it can be to keep communication in a large organization flowing in both directions. It often feels like growth and transparency have an inverse relationship. A recent study called “How Leaders Grow Today” conducted by my company and Dale Carnegie found 43 percent of employees were familiar with the company’s strategic goals but could not actually list them. This is a problem, since your employees need to be aware of how their projects fit into the overall organizational framework and how their specific contributions impact your company strategy. When I was the managing director of a corporation with thousands of employees and offices all over the world, even I had trouble remembering the organizational goals. In fact, I would write down the six major company goals on the back of my business card so I could keep track. If even upper management is having a problem tracking goals, imagine what the company strategy looks like from the lowest rung on the ladder. It’s no easy feat to take high-level organizational goals and translate them into everyday tasks while not losing sight of the company mission. With that in mind, it’s not hard to understand why a wide-ranging Gallup survey recently found only 30 percent of workers are engaged in the workplace. As goals cascade, they can easily go sideways or even against strategy, and soon you’re not just losing engagement, you’re wasting your investment in human capital – a currency like any other, but one that we too willingly disregard when it is not being fully utilized. The True Cost Of Goal Misalignment It’s no secret that the average organizational structures put 90 percent or more of your employees at the level furthest from view. Like a game of telephone, organizational goals cascading from the top of your organization to the bottom will often get lost in translation. This can set your company back big time, as the talented workers you hired to move company goals forward end up wasting their contributions on tasks unrelated to your strategy. So what’s the true cost of misalignment? There are many facets to how a lack of proper goal alignment in your company can impact your bottom line. For instance, goal alignment leads to more motivated and engaged employees since they can see exactly how their work is impacting and shaping the company. Without goal alignment, it’s easy for workers to lose track of how their efforts contribute to the organization. This means employees are less likely to be engaged in the workplace. And disengagement comes with high costs. A Gallup study found companies with disengaged employees had a 51 percent higher employee turnover rate. It also affects absenteeism, considering engaged employees in the UK take 2.69 sick days on average while disengaged employees are missing an average of 6.19 sick days per year. All of this can obviously make a huge impact on your bottom line. If employees don’t remember or understand organizational goals, your best people might be contributing work that doesn’t align with your strategy. Engagement aside, misalignment alone can translate into hundreds of millions of dollars in waste for larger companies that ultimately prevent them from operating efficiently. (To estimate how much human capital is going unutilized in your company, multiple the average salary by 43 percent. This is the additional capital you could be allocating to your important goals if you could produce full alignment.) In a Forbes study on alignment, 47 percent of those surveyed named cost containment as the highest operational priority. Yet these leaders are worrying about the wrong thing, since it’s really a game of cost alignment instead of containment. If your workforce isn’t aligned with company goals, the true cost to your company can be perilously high. Answering Those Two Questions With Goal Alignment So what’s the answer to saving your bottom line and wasting less human capital? Let’s return to those two major questions leaders are asking of their goal strategies: How are my people executing on my strategy? Focusing on goal alignment, especially in real time, will allow business leaders to see exactly how employees contribute toward company goals. Using a talent alignment platform can allow leaders to take a wider view of the company and understand what everyone is working on. Now you won’t have to guess what the 90 percent of employees are working on below your eyeline — you’ll be able to view a snapshot of the work happening from the top of the org chart to the bottom. For employees, being able to see how goals clearly connect to their everyday tasks helps keep them on track and motivated. They can see they’re not just a cog in a machine, but a vital and necessary element moving the company toward achieving goals and growing. Are my new resources onboarding into this strategy? Hiring is never an easy process and onboarding new people can feel like a minefield. If you can see how your human capital is allocated before your team drafts the job description, however, you can hire smarter. Focusing on goals allows your company to see the forest instead of only the trees. If you can see the organization as a whole, you can easily tell which segments of your company need assistance to accomplish tasks. You won’t have to ask yourself why you’re hiring and what these new employees will be contributing, because you’ll know before the onboarding process begins how a new hire will fit into the company puzzle. As a leader, you can’t afford to get stuck on the details and miss the bigger picture. Aligning your human capital with company goals helps cut costs, accomplish objectives and increase engagement. As for me, I was finally able to throw away the company goal cheat sheet. What do you think? How do you keep your organization aligned with company goals? Share in the comments! Author: Andre LavoieFollow Bio: Andre Lavoie is the CEO of Clear Company, the first talent alignment platform that bridges the gap between talent management and business strategy by contextualizing employees’ work around a company’s vision and goals. You can connect with him and the Clear Company team on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Other Articles by Andre LavoieIgnoring This Issue Could Ruin Your Company
Posted on: Mon, 07 Oct 2013 23:06:39 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015