There are no two ways about it, misalignment can hurt your bottom line. The chances of an organisation achieving above-median financial performance double when its leaders work together – a stat that truly can’t be ignored in this climate. In order to build organisational resilience, you must address factors that can actively undermine your efforts. By failing to do so, you risk making positive steps on shaky foundations. When employee and company goals are misaligned, it can create friction, and even cause decreased performance and productivity among teams. Having a misaligned workforce has a greater impact than just your bottom line. Here’s how to build resilience through company alignment.
- What is employee misalignment?
- How to recognise employee and organisational misalignment
- 10 benefits of organisational alignment: values and goal setting
- The real cost misalignment during a recession
What is employee misalignment?
If an employee doesn’t see the value in your organisation’s purpose, vision, and values, or they simply don’t understand how their role adds value, that’s misalignment. This can be a big challenge to overcome if you’re not sure where to start. Having misaligned employee goals with organisational goals can create friction, and even decrease team performance and productivity. It is imperative that the company tackle misalignment as a whole – changing only one aspect of the culture can actually fuel further misalignment. Alignment is also a constant consideration when dealing with the lack of resilience in an organisation. Any changes you make must always factor in the possibility of accidentally creating a source of misalignment.
What is organisational alignment?
From entry-level positions to executive managers, organisational alignment ensures that each member shares a common goal and vision for the success of an organisation. Any attempt to become a purposeful brand will quickly derail if the company’s rhetoric is not matched by its actions. If what an organisation stands for does not align with how it conducts business, even the most devout believers will become discouraged quickly. Alignment allows members of an organisation to work together to achieve common goals, communicate honestly, and maintain accountability.
How to recognise employee and organisational misalignment
Workplace tension:
Employees who are misaligned can easily become resentful. Their dissatisfaction can lead to antagonistic behaviour in the workplace if they don’t feel like they have a common goal or don’t feel like they are moving in the same direction as their peers.
Poor productivity:
Teams that are misaligned will likely want different and conflicting things, which makes it difficult for them to work together. When there is a poor connection, the results will be skewed or the project may be delayed as you try to resolve the issues. It’s almost impossible to get your employees on the same page without a culture of clear communication. If you don’t communicate clearly from the top, if manager instructions are unclear, or if employees lack communication with each other, misalignment can creep right in and take a devastating jab at productivity.
Insufficient employee empowerment:
When an employee feels that they are not listened to or that they are not empowered to succeed in their role, they will stop trying to be heard. The insights and suggestions they provide will be lost, and they won’t seek to improve their engagement with others. You may be experiencing misalignment if you are seeing this lack of communication and engagement.
Lack of accountability:
It’s a major source of stress within your organisation if your team don’t take responsibility for their actions. However, it’s important to note that these employees might not necessarily have the tools or goals to take accountability. Without defined goals, it’s a challenge to know what success looks like.
Overwork and burnout:
Burnout will ultimately result from all the factors mentioned above. In these circumstances, tensions, poor connections, muddled communication, and lack of empowerment are inevitable consequences. It could indicate that your company has a huge alignment problem if your employees are running to stand still.
10 benefits of organisational alignment: values and goal setting
A well-aligned organisation is an important part of a company’s success. Understanding the importance, benefits and ways of achieving organisational alignment may help you more effectively accomplish your operational goals. When an organisation’s values are clearly defined and business decisions and actions are aligned with those values, it can reap numerous benefits – for example:
1. Improved reputation and trust
Your business decisions will gain the trust and respect of all stakeholders, such as employees, customers, suppliers and partners, when they are aligned with your organisational values. Your business will gain a reputation for reliability and trustworthiness if you operate with integrity and transparency. Businesses must reflect their purpose in their operations and business structure to become truly purposeful brands.
2. Better team collaboration & higher resource visibility
Collaboration is encouraged across entire organisations when organisational alignment is in place. Improvements in collaboration and teamwork may also lead to improvements in productivity and efficiency. Having your team work together to achieve a common goal helps your organisation better achieve its objectives, boost employee satisfaction, and build interdepartmental relationships. The alignment of departments can help you to better visualise your resources, too. Resources may be shared more readily between departments when they work toward a common goal. When departments are aligned, a sense of togetherness can be fostered in place of competition, resulting in more efficient knowledge sharing and innovative use of resources. The importance of maximising your workforce grows even more during layoffs and team downsizing.
3. Higher employee engagement and motivation
Having a clear alignment between your business decisions and the values of your organisation will result in highly motivated and engaged employees. It is easier for employees to stay engaged when they have clear goals to aim for. As a result of these ambitious goals, employees feel motivated and inspired to strive for new heights. From focusing efforts in the right direction to increasing engagement and aligning the team; a passionate employee is more likely to be committed to the goals of the organisation if they feel their work is meaningful and they believe their goals are aligned with their own beliefs.
4. A decrease in employee turnover
It goes without saying, higher employee engagement and motivation results in higher retention rates. What does success look like to your organisation? It’s challenging to recognise employees that are excelling when you’re not sure what that looks like against the norm. First things first, define your idea of high performance in order to reward appropriately and be sure to communicate it across the business.
5. Faster decision-making
A better understanding of organisational alignment may enable team members to better determine their responsibilities and their decision-making authority. When decisions are not made, productivity suffers, deadlines are missed, and ripple effects affect the entire organisation. Aligning the organisation provides greater clarity as to who is responsible for each work activity within it. By eliminating delays caused by indecision or confusion about communication channels, faster decisions, improvements and innovations can be made.
6. Better optimised roles
In times of economic downturn, budgets tighten, but hiring and reshuffling internal jobs may still be necessary. That’s the costly reality. With alignment prioritised, you’re able to spot gaps in workforce expertise or ability quicker and make smarter hiring decisions. This could be the difference between hiring too early without the work or funds, or too late at the cost of burning out your team to cover the interim. Employees in an aligned organisation can also contribute to an organisation’s success to the best of their abilities and know they are making an impact.
7. Improved self-governance and accountability
As a result of a well-aligned organisation, team members are likely to work more independently and demonstrate an increased sense of accountability. The main reason for this is that organisational alignment allows employees to understand their responsibilities, prioritise their tasks, and make informed decisions based on the organisation’s common goal. When employees don’t need to wait for directions, they may feel more empowered to take decisions and complete their tasks on their own. As a result, supervisors and managers may be able to spend less time directing their employees and more time contributing to the success of the organisation.
8. Consistent quality and delivery
High-quality work will be more likely to be consistently delivered by employees who recognise and embrace your business’ values. Organisation alignment allows employees to focus on performing high-quality work rather than on figuring out who’s supposed to do what and who needs to be consulted when making decisions.
9. Enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty
Aligned goal setting can create space open for feedback and suggestions, especially from your frontline employees, who know the challenges and issues affecting performance better than anyone else. The processes within a truly aligned organisation are designed to ensure that what is expected is consistently delivered. In doing so, the organisation is able to consistently supply frictionless products and solutions to clients while also incorporating the complexity necessary to do so. With continuous feedback, it allows your staff to stay on top of their goals and objectives, as well as get a jump start on making the improvements that might be holding them back. This is particularly useful for customer-facing employees whose insights can help you better understand your audience, allowing you to pivot quicker to provide better solutions.
10. Healthier company culture
A well-aligned organisation may contribute to the development of a positive, dynamic company culture. Employees’ morale and emotional fulfilment can be increased when an organisation emphasises joint success and working together to reach common goals. An increased level of employee satisfaction may lead to a longer-term relationship, less employee turnover, and higher job performance as a result. Leaders who understand the benefits of promoting alignment rather than requiring compliance will have a more motivated and effective workforce.
The real cost misalignment during a recession
It’s no secret that misalignment can hurt your bottom line. Achieving strategic organisational alignment often involves setting clearly defined, specific goals for your company. Having an advanced understanding of the goals you wish to achieve through alignment could help you make more informed decisions about how to implement changes in your organisation. We’ve written a helpful guide on how to recession-proof your organisation, from aligning your goals to focusing on employee experience, we’ve covered everything you need to know to make impactful and positive changes to ensure longevity. Get your copy below.