Aligning To The Vision

In a global company with a full suite of departments and functions, it can be difficult for employees to feel a connection with leadership’s vision. To get the best from everyone and provide a more meaningful work experience, we need to help employees understand how their individual roles support that vision and contribute to its success.

Here are five ways to make the vision relevant to their day-to-day experiences and encourage buy-in:

Show them the big picture

Give employees plenty of resources to learn about the whole operation of your company. When employees are focused on their everyday tasks, they may lose sight of (or not understand) the broader goals of the organization. Help them understand the role the organization plays in the marketplace and the solutions it provides for clients or customers. Let them see that they’re working on something larger than themselves.

Give them ownership in their roles

Encourage managers to give employees the opportunity to make important decisions in their roles and to run some projects on their own. The opportunity to modify processes or take a risk on a new idea allows them to feel ownership of their work and gives them a vested interest in the larger goals that their function supports. It helps employees grow their capabilities and build skills that they might not have developed otherwise.

Connect them to the outcome

When something good happens for the company, whether it’s great feedback from a key client or strong quarterly numbers, show employees how contributions from everyone led to that result. Be sure to acknowledge the less visible functions, like legal and finance. From operations to support functions, make sure their work is recognized in relation to the positive outcome — then show how that fits into the company’s overall road map.

Build it into leadership messaging

Make the most of the tone from the top by having your CEO and other C-suite executives touch on the vision for the company at town halls, in newsletter communications and in any video content you produce. When your people hear it straight from their top leadership, the vision becomes more real for them, and they get a better understanding of where the vision can take the company. And why that vision is worthy of their hard work.

Consider their feedback

Create opportunities for two-way communications so employees can share their thoughts and questions about the long-term vision. When communication about the big picture is focused on talking to employees instead of with them, they’re less likely to feel ownership of their part in supporting that vision. They need to be included in the conversation about how to make that happen.