How to Align Your Employees’ Personal Goals with Your Business Goals and Interests
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How to Align Your Employees’ Personal Goals with Your Business Goals and Interests
Let’s face it: we are all driven first by our own interests and goals. This doesn’t mean that we are selfish or careless of others. By contrary, it’s our responsibility to take care of our own interests and goals. Do you agree? Who else should care about our dreams and goals if not ourselves? Maybe our closest friends and relatives will support us in pursuing them, but they will do the work for us.
This means that your employees are driven by their own interests and goals first.
How many times have these interests interfered with your business interests?
1. The Employee Perspective on the Business Goals and Interests
From an employee’s perspective, the business goals and interests are ”overwritten” by his or her personal interests and goals.
When an employee thinks that something is not aligned with his or her interests, they can behave in different ways:
Perform the tasks that they don’t want to do superficially.
Withhold helping a colleague with whom they are competing for a promotion.
Refuse to stay a half an extra hour when urgent matters arises because they have their own urgent things, or simple because they prefer to do something else.
Show dissatisfaction through behaviours such as complaining, withdrawing from others, or not participating at the levels they are capable of.
Leave the company if it doesn’t offer them what they want, for example: the development opportunities that they seek, the salary increases or benefits they want, or the work environment they would like to have.
How Employees Form Their Perceptions of Their Current Jobs
The employee considers his/her past work experiences and how he/she wants to develop professionally
The employee’s references for evaluating their jobs and forming their perceptions of them are their past experiences and their future goals, or more simply, what they want in the future. That is why it’s so important to know your employees’ past work experiences in detail and, at the same time, what they want in the future.
Because we naturally have the tendency to grow, you won’t often find a person who is content with less than he or she had in the past. There are people who apply for and accept lower positions than they had before, but this doesn’t mean that they are happy with their jobs.
I saw this all the time during my experience with hiring projects. Some people accept lower job positions as a temporary solution to their difficult situations. They take a break for a few months just to rest, but then they start looking again for what they really want. And they should do this if they don’t want to remain in professional regression for a long time.
I myself accepted a job that I knew wasn’t what I wanted, because I was exhausted from searching again and again, day after day, a job that didn’t seem to exist for me. I was pursuing my own interests. I knew it wasn’t in the employer’s interest to hire me, as I wasn’t going to stay there for long. I’m not proud of myself for doing that, and it turned out that I didn’t get any relief from the pressures I was feeling, it just added other worries about feeling like I was in the wrong place, with the wrong people for me. Not that they were bad people, but they were simply not the right people for me.
Coming back to the main idea, the employee compares what he or she has now with what he or she had in the past. The more details you know about the employee’s past work experiences, the more data you’ll have to understand how they perceive the current job. These details include not only the tasks they perform, but also the autonomy they had in past jobs, the leadership they experienced, the growth or evolution they went through, the types of organizational culture they work in, the working conditions, and so on. Based on that, you can make decisions related to the employee’s role in the company and to other aspects of their job that are important to them.
The more details you know about how the employee wants to develop professionally, the more you’ll understand the direction they want to go and whether that direction can be pursued within your company. You’ll see if you can create opportunities for them to move in those directions.
The employee considers what other people with similar positions, from the same company or from others companies, give and receive in their jobs
Furthermore, to better understand the employee’s behaviour and how they form their perceptions of the current job, consider that employees compares what they give to the company and what they receive from it with what their colleagues in similar positions give to the company and receive from it. Plus, they compare their inputs and outputs with what other people outside the company give and receive at their workplaces.
Equity is very important in the workplace. When employees think something is unfair, they will react in different ways to reduce the tension created by the situation. For more details about this, read one of my previous blog posts here.
2. The Employer's Perspective on Business Goals and Interests
Looking from the employer’s point of view, when your business interests are not being fulfilled by employees, you take action to correct or improve the behaviours that you consider unacceptable. Is this true?
How do you correct these behaviours? Do you address the symptoms or the source of the symptoms? If you address only the symptoms, the source remains. The problem is not solved.
3. How to Align Employees' Personal Goals with Business Goals and Interests
Instead of reacting to these kinds of behaviours, you can stay a few steps ahead and prevent them – or at least prevent a large part of them. You can do this only if you align your employees’ expectations and goals with your business goals and interests.
What does this mean? It means that by working with you to achieve the business goals, employees are also achieving their own goals. First, you have to know what your employees’ personal goals and interests are. Then, you have to create a clear path for them so they know that if they achieve what you want from them, they can also achieve their own goals.
If they don’t know whether they can achieve what they want professionally in your company, they may start looking for those opportunities elsewhere or become disengaged and reduce their efforts. I don’t want to scare you, but this is how things happen.
Examples:
1. A sales employee, John, is asked to support a colleague, Eric, in closing a big client deal, but even if he says he will, he doesn’t really get involved because helping doesn’t directly contribute to his individual sales targets, even though the client would benefit the company as a whole
John’s goal is to achieve his sales targets and obtain the bonus that comes with them.
The company’s goal is to acquire a new client (besides John reaching his sales targets).
What can the employer do?
Find out the reason why John doesn’t get involved in helping Eric. Then, the employer could grant John a portion of the bonus that Eric will earn if he closes the deal, as recognition of John’s contribution. Alternatively, he could offer John the bonus he would earn if he reached his targets, regardless of whether he achieves them or not.
There may also be other solutions that allow John to reach his monetary target even if he helps his colleague.
2. Sara prioritizes leaving work on time to maintain her personal life, even if it means missing critical project deadlines that are important to the company.
Sara’s personal goal is to leave work on time.
The employer’s goal is to have her at work for critical project deadlines.
What can the employer do?
Find out if leaving work exactly at the scheduled time is a necessity—maybe Sara needs to pick up her child from school, or there are other reasons.
If it is a necessity, Sara might be willing to stay past her scheduled hours during critical deadlines, but she needs to know in advance so she can make arrangements, such as having someone else pick up her child. If this isn’t possible, at least the employer will understand why and can assign someone else to cover Sara during those situations.
If the reason is that Sara fears having too little personal time, the employer could offer extra free time on other days to compensate.
4. Why the Employer Should Take the Initiative to Find Out Employees’ Goals and Interests
Only a few people will go to their employer and ask for what they want. Why only a few? Because they aren’t used to doing that, and because if they don’t succeed in obtaining what they asked for, it will be hard for them to move on. Once an employee expressed his or her requests, it’s clear that there are some unmet expectations, and things aren’t quite right between you. How things turn out in such situations depends largely on the employee’s ability to negotiate and also on your ability to negotiate.
Although there is nothing wrong with an employee asking for what he or she wants, it’s not recommended for the employer to make decisions based on the employee’s ability to negotiate. This can result in a strange range of rewards and compensations that don’t reflect the value that each employee brings to the company, but rather each employee’s ability to ”sell” themselves.
As I mentioned earlier, people compare what they bring to and what they receive from the company with what other colleagues in similar positions bring and receive from the company. They value equity. If you trust that rewards and compensations are confidential, think again. Is it really true that they don’t talk about it, or that they can’t figure out how much a person earns based on his or her expenses?
If you accept an employee’s arguments for giving him or her certain benefits, consider giving the same benefits to those who have a similar value to the company, even if they haven’t requested anything additional. You’ll make a lot of people happy.
So, if an employee asks to attend a training and you approve the request, see if other employees with similar positions also want to attend that training or another one. If an employee asks you for a salary raise and you decide to grant it, adjust the salaries of employees in similar positions as well. Nobody would be okay with a colleague in a similar position earning more when this person’s contribution is lower than theirs.
These kinds of inequities often occur when new hires are made. When candidates come with higher salary expectations and the employer feels pressured to hire someone, they may offer more to the new employee than to employees in similar positions who have been with the company longer and are more experienced. This will lead to dissatisfaction and demotivation.
People are seeing these things even if they don’t talk about them in front of you.
So, when you take the initiative and ask each employee about his or her personal professional expectations, you relieve the pressure on those who want to come to you with requests and give everyone the chance to express their thoughts about their current jobs. I remember that, in the past, when I heard that someone went and claimed certain benefits, I would think to myself – ”I wish I were as bold as that person”. The frustration was there, but I didn’t go to ask for more.
It might not be easy for you to have these discussions with employees, but creating this transparency will help you see the current situation more accurately and make better decisions. You’ll be able to see more clearly when the decisions you make for an employee interfere with his own interests and goals, and what drives them and ensure their engagement.
You can have these discussions with the help of the online program that I’ve created for you: How to Motivate Your Employees so They Care for Your Business and Help You Grow It.
You’ll get a framework to analyse each one of your employees’ motivation related to 7 aspects of their jobs:
- Job characteristics
- Their benefits
- The leadership style they receive
- Work relationships
- Professional development opportunities
- Company’s values vs employee’s values
- Company’s goals vs. employees’ goals
You can learn more about this program here.
To conclude, when you want to motivate your employees take into consideration:
1. The employee’s past work experience. Find out as much detail as possible.
2. His/her professional plans for the future.
3. How he/she sees themselves compared with colleagues in terms of inputs (what they bring to the company) and outputs (what they receive).
4. How he/she sees themselves compare with other people in similar positions from other companies in terms of inputs and outputs.
5. To align the employee’s personal goals with your business goals and interests.
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