With the commencement of the new financial year, many of us have reset our key business goals and strategies. Developing clear targets for the coming financial year, whilst important, is the easy part; the hard part is ensuring your employees ‘pull in the same direction’, that is align themselves to achieving your new vision for the new financial year.

There are no silver bullets when it comes to engaging and aligning employees; however there are some tried and tested employee engagement approaches which have proven highly effective in lifting employee focus, which are well worth considering:

• Make Sure Employees Know How they Fit into the Master Plan- one of the best ways to align employees behind your business goals is to ensure employees know how their day to day contributions affect company performance. This can be achieved in a few different ways, including reviewing job descriptions and refining these so that individual KPI’s correlate to overall company performance indicators; engaging employees in group strategy sessions so new goals and strategies can be clearly articulated and providing employees with regular constructive feedback about their role and performance.
• Develop and Nurture Your Talent- Encouraging the growth and professional development of your employees is another way to lift focus and engagement. Providing employees with formalised Professional Development Plans (PDP’s) and/ or covering external training and development courses will improve the skills of your staff. More skill=better performance for the business.
• Promote the Free Flow of Ideas- your employees are your most important resource, and they will have constructive ideas for the business. It is important to nurture a culture where employees feel they can contribute suggestions to improve business operations, and this can be done easily. For instance, you could conduct mini brain-storming sessions where employees can communicate their ideas for improvements in company operations, or similarly provide employees with an Ideas Log, a place where staff can provide written suggestions of ways to enhance efficiency and do things better.
• Reward and Recognise – Keeping employees motivated and with their ‘eyes on the prize’ each and every day is paramount to see your goals for the business achieved. Recognising employees for their contributions and achievements via an informal recognition program is a sensational way to align employees. Reward can be aligned to KPI’s, and is the carrot employees need to continue to work for the goals you have set, and such programs are easy to implement and cultivate.

What employee engagement strategies have you used to align your staff with your business goals? Have they worked?

Simon Tufrey – Motivation Coach, Power2Motivate