Organizations today operate in conditions defined by Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA). Originally introduced by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus in the 1980s and...
Read Full ArticleApril 25th, 2025 – Tori Rochlen
Are your employees genuinely aligned with your company’s goals or unknowingly pulling in different directions? When you connect employee performance goals to your organization’s strategic vision, you help bolster engagement and overall performance.
Visibility into company goals helps employees feel invested in the organization’s larger objectives, preventing disengagement and burnout. Understanding how their work contributes to the big picture keeps employees motivated and connected to the company’s mission.
A disconnect between employee goals and organizational strategy is one of the top pitfalls in goals setting, according to McKinsey. The result? Demotivated and disengaged employees.
“You can’t measure progress against a goal if you don’t know what the goal is,” says Andrew Hibschman, VP of Customer Success with SkillCycle. “But visibility into company goals also allows for more organic cross-collaboration between individuals and teams.”
The impact of keeping company goals in sight for all employees goes beyond the efforts they contribute toward their own objectives. Knowing what other teams are working on enables employees to offer support and contribute beyond their immediate roles, adding value to the organization and providing personal growth opportunities.
In this piece on how to keep people focused on company goals, we’ll explore:
Goal alignment is the process of ensuring that individual, team, and organizational objectives are all moving in the same direction. When goals are aligned, everyone in the workplace understands how their efforts contribute to the company’s broader mission and strategy.
This clarity helps boost motivation, enhances collaboration, and increases overall productivity. Ultimately, goal alignment matters because it creates a unified workforce working toward shared success.
Key benefits of goal alignment:
While some leaders might feel confident that they’ve made their expectations clear at work, the numbers suggest employees have less clarity than leaders assume. Fewer than half of employees strongly agree they know what is expected of them at work, according to Gallup.
Aligning organizational and employee goals is essential to ensure everyone is pulling in the same, and more importantly, the correct direction. When employees understand how their individual goals align with organizational objectives, their efforts contribute meaningfully to the company’s success.
Without this alignment, employees might achieve their personal goals but miss critical organizational targets, leading to a sense of failure and frustration.
“When employees aren’t clear on which goals are most critical to the company, they may not realize how and where they’ll be held accountable,” says Hibschman.
For example, someone on your marketing team might feel proud for accomplishing a particular project but, along the way, could miss a revenue target that is directly tied to a critical company outcome. This can be demotivating and disheartening for an employee who felt they were performing well.
Clear goal alignment prevents these issues by ensuring that all efforts are coordinated toward shared, strategic outcomes. This fosters a sense of purpose and contributes to the organization’s overall success.
Ensuring alignment between individual efforts and company objectives not only supports effective performance management, but also enhances engagement and motivation.
“Executive and senior leadership teams regularly discuss goal performance, tracking, and management,” says Hibschman. “But do they cascade these conversations down to their team? More often than not, there are gaps.”
Below are several key strategies that leaders can implement to maintain this focus and drive success.
Ensure all employees can easily see and understand the company’s goals. This helps them align their efforts with organizational objectives and understand the metrics by which leaders will evaluate their performance.
Discuss progress toward goals regularly and celebrate achievements publicly. Recognize both individual and team accomplishments to reinforce the importance of goal attainment and foster a culture of accountability.
Hold regular check-ins and open discussions about goals. This allows employees to voice their challenges and contributions, ensuring goals remain relevant and achievable.
Schedule one-on-one meetings to discuss goal progress without directly linking them to performance reviews. This supportive environment encourages employees to share their progress and seek help with obstacles.
Keep a detailed record of goal progress, milestones, and obstacles. This documentation serves as a self-advocacy tool and helps employees and managers track and discuss achievements and challenges.
Avoid superficial rewards and instead offer incentives that contribute to individual development. This could include sending employees to conferences, providing coaching, or other professional growth opportunities beyond simple acknowledgments.
Aligning employees with company goals starts at the top, with leadership clearly defining and communicating the organization’s main priorities and vision. These high-level objectives should then cascade down to departments and teams, ensuring everyone understands how their work contributes to broader success.
For example, if the company’s goal is to expand into a new market, leadership might set a target for sales teams to achieve specific revenue milestones, while marketing focuses on building local brand awareness. Involving employees in the goal-setting process through regular meetings, feedback loops, and transparent updates fosters buy-in and helps individuals see the direct impact of their efforts.
Recognizing achievements and providing meaningful incentives further motivates staff to stay aligned and engaged with company objectives.
Building on the importance of aligning employees with company goals, it’s equally crucial to connect individual aspirations to organizational objectives. When employees see how their personal goals-such as developing new skills or advancing in their careers-fit into the company’s broader mission, their motivation and engagement naturally increase.
For instance, if an employee’s goal is to become a team leader, and the company is expanding into new markets, supporting their leadership development not only fulfills personal ambitions but also strengthens the company’s growth strategy.
This alignment creates a win-win situation, where employees feel valued and driven, and the organization benefits from a more committed, high-performing team. Ultimately, strong motivation comes from knowing that personal success contributes directly to collective achievement.
Here are a few concrete examples of how personal and organizational goal alignment can work in practice, along with the benefits this synergy brings:
These examples show that when individual aspirations are connected to company objectives, both employees and organizations benefit through increased motivation, engagement, and shared success.
Setting employee goals should fall right after any performance review to highlight a path to better outcomes. The goals should be clear and actionable to help employees improve and add meaning to the process.
“If an employee has fallen short in their performance review, the immediate next step should be setting a goal that allows them to demonstrate success and overcome any obstacles,” says Hibschman.
For example, if an employee exceeds their goals, their leader can give them stretch goals that promote growth and development, which will provide a sense of accomplishment and motivation. This connection ensures that effective performance management is not just about receiving a raise or promotion, but about setting employee goals that foster a deeper connection to personal and organizational objectives.
When employees see that their feedback directly influences their goals, they are more likely to stay engaged and strive for continuous improvement, ultimately benefiting the organization.
By maintaining visibility and open communication around accountability and expectations, leaders ensure that goals remain a constant part of discussions.
It’s a smart idea to have regular check-ins with your team to monitor progress and make goals a regular topic in meetings or feedback discussions. These conversations help avoid the surprise of unmet goals, which can quickly lead to disengagement of your employees.
“Leaders must be supportive of the process, not just the outcome,” says Hibschman. “If an employee is struggling, leadership should have an active role in helping them struggle less.”
Normalize having goal-related conversations outside of formal reviews to make these discussions less intimidating. Feedback provided regularly in casual settings helps employees feel more supported and committed to achieving their objectives.
When leaders prioritize visibility, communication, and meaningful feedback, they cultivate an environment where employees remain focused and invested in the company’s mission.Aligning company and employee performance goals can get your team members pulling together — in the right direction. Ready to learn more? Schedule a demo today.
Goal alignment is the process of ensuring individual and team objectives support the company’s overall mission, which is important because it boosts motivation, collaboration, and organizational success.
You can align employee goals with broader business goals by clearly communicating the company’s vision and priorities, involving employees in the goal-setting process, and ensuring that individual objectives are specific, measurable, and directly connected to organizational outcomes-for example, by cascading company targets down to team and personal goals, providing ongoing feedback, and recognizing achievements to keep everyone motivated and aligned.
The best way to align your team with the company’s mission is to communicate it clearly and consistently, connect daily work to the mission, and involve team members in setting goals that support it.
Rewards and recognition help with alignment because they motivate employees to focus on and achieve goals that support the organization’s priorities, making individuals feel valued and more connected to the company’s mission, which in turn boosts engagement, productivity, and retention.
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