Goal alignment is a powerful method that not only clarifies job roles for individual employees, but also improves engagement and overall performance. This approach provides employees with a specific purpose and objective, one they know is contributing to the success of the organisation.
With employee engagement and retention directly impacting on the bottom line, goal alignment should be key to any effective talent management strategy.
The state of employee engagement in New Zealand
The Deloitte survey shows leadership and employee engagement are the top issues facing Kiwi organisations.
Deloitte says workers are becoming more mobile, contingent and autonomous, and as a result, harder to manage and engage. Organisations need to re-imagine the way they manage people and come up with out-of-the-box ideas to make themselves relevant.
The number of respondents who cited engagement as being "very important" doubled from 26 per cent last year to 50 per cent this year. Sixty per cent said they did not have an adequate programme to measure and improve engagement, indicating a lack of preparedness for addressing this issue. Only 12 per cent of HR and business leaders have a programme in place to define and build a strong culture; while only 7 per cent rated themselves as excellent at measuring, driving, and improving engagement and retention.
Gallup's State of the Global Workforce study, conducted across 142 countries, found that, globally, only 13 per cent of employees are engaged. In New Zealand we fare better, with 23 per cent of employees saying they are engaged, 62 per cent not engaged and 15 per cent being actively disengaged. Gallup puts the cost of this workplace disengagement in New Zealand more than $7.5 billion per year, a clear barrier to improving our global competitiveness and economic success.
Gallup also found only 20 per cent of the workforce has a strong connection between their work and corporate goals, leaving up to 80 per cent of employees unknowingly working hard on outcomes that may not be in the best interests of the organisation.
The bottom line is there are massive gains to be made from better engaging talent through goal alignment.
How to align top talent and corporate goals
All managers should take action to determine how they can better align top talent with the corporate objectives. Ask yourself:
• How can we better engage and align our top talent?
• Does our top talent know what our corporate goals are?
• Do they know how their job contributes to meeting these goals?
• Do we know how we are tracking against our corporate goals during the year?
• Are our talent management strategies effective in contributing to these corporate goals?
Next, try out a few easy remedies:
• Communicate corporate goals with your people.
• Re-evaluate employee performance plans to ensure they accurately align to the company's corporate goals.
• Provide employees with visibility of their performance plans and access to update it as they progress throughout the year. This gives the organisation a clearer, more holistic view of its annual progress, as well as its workforce's capabilities.
Many organisations do not follow through with employing effective talent management strategies because they can be seen as cumbersome and time-consuming. But specific talent management software is available in the market to automate and streamline goal alignment, freeing up the organisation to focus on its overall performance.
Taking action to increase corporate goal alignment and in turn, engagement of your top talent, will drive a more productive workforce, reduce turnover, and have a positive impact on the bottom line.
About Paul MacRae
Paul MacRae is the General Manager for Human Resource & Payroll at TechnologyOne. With more than 25 years' experience in the design and support of applications, Paul has a broad skill-set across all sectors of the service IT industry. Paul currently leads an innovative team committed to ensuring effective Human Capital Management across the company's client base.
