Why you need to get your employees to buy into your business objectives

One of the most fundamental ingredients to the success of any business is its workforce.

With the skills and expertise of employees, a company can best serve its customers' needs. But this can also only be achieved if employees are motivated and engaged. Otherwise, there's no real incentive for them to go above and beyond to help the business achieve its objectives.

Aligning employee engagement to business strategy is vital. It ensures you get the most out of your employees and ensures they are buying into an overarching goal.

Your business, your objectives

Before you can begin to consider how to align employee goals with corporate objectives, the latter must be clearly defined.

These objectives must be quantifiable and specific. This creates clear pathways to reach your targets and also makes it much easier to achieve employee alignment, setting goals and business objectives that offer shared value in the business for employee and employer alike.

Committing to these goals and making them public by entwining them with your workforce's tasks increases accountability and gives you the route toward wider rewards when these objectives are met.

Putting a deadline in place gives you further opportunities to discuss rewards with your employees. With a healthy business and engaged, rewarded employees thus begins the cycle of greater growth and incentive for all involved.

The benefits of employee engagement

Once your business objectives are clearly identified and employees are beginning to engage with them, you will hopefully start to feel some of those benefits.

• The company pulling in the same direction as one
  
  A feeling of pride to work for an organisation can be key in fostering shared values in business. Whether that's through the reputation of your organisation, top-bracket clients or the outstanding quality of products and services you supply, a sense of genuine achievement for employee's efforts can bring about unity across the workforce and with your business objectives.

• Greater productivity and willingness to 'get the job done'
  
  If tangible rewards can be expected by employees, there's a far greater chance of them going the extra mile when the chips are down. Recognition, rewards and rest are all useful tools to keep burnout at bay and make sure you can meet demand when it is at its highest.

• Targets routinely met and exceeded, encouraging growth
  
  Realistic, accurate and properly measured targets give people something to aim for. By properly communicating how these targets will be set and achieved, it lays out clearly what employees need to do to enjoy rewards and progress in their careers. This in turn helps your company grow — something that ought to be communicated to those staff members that helped bring it about, encouraging accountability for success and not just setbacks.

• Increased employee retention, lower recruitment costs
  
  An engaged, happy workforce will be a consistent one. Reward good work and people are far less likely to look for it elsewhere. Lowering the need for recruitment drives, this also ensures HR departments are not overloaded with complaints and issues of ill-discipline, allowing you to keep honing and perfect your communication strategies.