“Mission, Vision, and Values”. We hear these words so often that they can end up becoming empty buzzwords, especially for employees. If you think that this is how your employees feel, then you need to rethink your company mission and the way you align it with your employees’ goals.
Your company’s mission, vision, and values are important documents that articulate what your company is trying to do and what it stands for. For a company to thrive it needs happy and dedicated employees and the best way to have dedicated employees is by helping them connect with your company’s goals.
You connect your company goals with your employee’s goals by aligning your mission, vision, and values to your employees’ focus. Show them that there’s a way, a path to follow to learn, grow, scale in the company, and contribute to society. Let them know that their work has a purpose and give them goals that align with what the company wants to achieve, and stands for.
But how can you create this connection? Creating this alignment is a challenge on its own, and can sometimes end up in you giving the wrong message and your employees feeling even more drifted from your company than before.
To avoid those kinds of situations, be sure to keep reading because here’s how to connect employees with your company’s mission, vision, and values:
What is your company about?
We all have seen that “About Us” section on companies’ websites where they explain their history and also their mission, vision, and values. Now, these three words although similar, strive to accomplish a different objective, and it’s important that you identify and understand each of them and what they mean to your company. Let’s start with the Mission:
- Your Mission: What you need to do. Your mission explains what differentiates your company from others in the same industry. The mission is the path that will guide you to achieve your main goals (your vision).
- Your Vision: Where you want to go. The end goal. What you want to achieve on a larger scale. Your vision is the realization of a company’s dream, and it gives you and your employees a sense of purpose. Create a company vision that inspires and motivates employees to work toward achieving it. Remember that to remain engaged, employees need to see how their work every day drives the vision forward.
- Values: What You Believe In. Your values are an example of what your mission and vision represent on the daily basis. Employees need to know exactly what your company values are and how they translate into actions and behaviors in each role. Values can align employees wherever they’re located, whether they’re working from home or seeing each other face to face, and when they are clearly defined, your values can become the shared thread of company culture.
Check out Give Meaning to Your Corporate Values to have a deeper understanding of company values how to define the ones that your company needs.
Tips to Connect your Team with your Company
To connect employees to the company mission, vision, and values — and each other — they need to see how their daily work affects the larger business. Follow these tips and learn how to improve your company culture and connect your employees with your company mission:
1. Communicate your mission and core values
Core values are extremely important and a responsible company should always be a step ahead in manifesting these core values in every employee.
Communication will allow you to unlock every door in your organization and ensure that your employees are not only listening to your mission, vision, and values but that they embody them as well. People learn by example, so be sure that your managers and supervisors are people who embody the company values and treat each employee with respect.
Supervisors and Managers are some of the people that represent what the company stands for and if they are not helping you to spread out a good and healthy work environment that’s aligned with the company mission and values, then you know where to start with the changes.
2. Encourage Openness in Your Workspace
Most problems that occur in the workplace are due to communication issues. This may happen due to communication channels not being strong enough. If the communication between one team and another is unclear or breaks down, it can lead to problems arising and a chaotic work environment.
Creating Openness in your workplace is part of the responsibility of your supervisor and managers. This means your organization must create an environment where managers clearly know the company values communication and employees feel comfortable speaking up.
Opening up communication takes commitment and intentional effort but the results are worth it. Here’s what you can do to encourage open communication:
- Acknowledge that your employees’ views are important.
- Ask your employees for input.
- Engage your employees on a personal level.
- Be respectful to your employees.
- Acknowledge your employees’ input.
3. Align your processes with your mission
The processes your company goes through should be based on top of your mission and values. That way you bring your employees in direct touch with the essential aspects that make your company strong and unique.
Your mission should be something that’s reminded daily, talk about it, and make your employees see how your company values affect and improve work processes so that the more they work on their routines, the more they incorporate the company mission and values, and as a result, they will end up embracing your values and learning them by heart.
4. Celebrate achievements that align with the company mission
The best work comes from understanding your company’s mission and vision.
When you see that an employee is moving in line with the organizational mission, making huge efforts, and doing a good job, take some time and appreciate that effort. Remember that happy and motivated employees build a comfortable and healthy workspace that encourages people to share their ideas and views openly.
Programs that directly reward employee efforts will motivate employees to make more efforts towards incorporating these healthy habits into their work schedules. So be sure to help your employees become more productive with better time and task management skills, conduct regular surveys to know how they are feeling and what can be improved, and remember to celebrate effort, progress, and personal wins.
All of these tips will help you to have more dedicated and happy employees that will engrain your company values in their hearts.
