Goals are the New Tweets: How to use Social Goals for Your Company

That's not a valid work email account. Please enter your work email (e.g. you@yourcompany.com)
Please enter your work email
(e.g. you@yourcompany.com)

Business Smart Goal Setting When it comes to finding the best people for your organization, you need to be on the cutting edge of technology. So, it’s no wonder employers and recruiters are often early adopters of new technology solutions. And, frankly, if you’re not – you should be.

Currently, 94 percent of recruiters are utilizing social media in order to find the best people. Six in 10 companies are using video interviews to connect with tech-savvy candidates on the move. And cloud computing has found its way into everything from document sharing to applicant tracking systems.

Keeping your organization running smoothly and staffed with the best people isn’t a once-a-year task. You must pay attention to your organization’s goal alignment year-round so all your employees are actually contributing toward objectives instead of having their work lost in the crowd.

While Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn can be great sources to find talented candidates, your organization needs to look beyond the social realm if you want to retain your top talent. Maintaining proper goal alignment in your company means seeing your organization from the top of the org chart to the bottom.

With a great talent alignment platform, you can see what all your employees are busy working on, address problems, and reward your star talent. Keeping your organization aligned with company goals, and visualizing this alignment, is the best way to hire smarter, retain great people, and ensure your organizational objectives are being met.

So why are goals the new tweets? Let’s take a look at why goal alignment is soon to be the newest trend for finding and keeping the best people :

Recruit Smarter

Knowing you need to hire and knowing why you need to hire are two separate things. Goal alignment means you understand your organization from top to bottom, which can allow you to be more intelligent and strategic in your hiring efforts. Aligning your talent with goals means you know what your employees are working on, you can see their progress, and you understand at a glance how the workflow of your best people fits into wider organizational goals.

Because you can see the workflow of your whole organization, you can truly understand why your requisitions matter. This means you’re not just taking it on faith that you need to hire more people — you know exactly what role they’ll play in your company. This allows you to focus in on the hard and soft skills you know you’ll need in the ideal candidate. It also gives HR and recruiting a seat at the table in terms of the strategic mission and vision for the company.

Communicate Better

I can almost guarantee you that your company’s communication isn’t as good as you think it is. According to the “How Leaders Grow Today ” survey by Clear Company and Dale Carnegie, less than 6 percent of companies communicate corporate goals daily. So, it should come as no surprise the survey also found more than 40 percent of employees were familiar with but unable to list important company goals.

You must provide clear communication and allow employees to visualize how and why their work matters. Few companies and leaders, however, have the time to sit down with the workforce daily and outline company goals. This is why focusing on goal alignment is so important, so workers can quickly and easily see how their individual contributions add up to the whole. It helps onboard new hires faster by quickly helping them understand where they fit into the organizational hierarchy and how their efforts will contribute toward important company goals.

Fix Mistakes Faster

Because you can see your whole organization with crystal clarity, you can also see when your workforce is getting off track. Being able to fix issues in real-time, before a small mistake snowballs into a huge problem, is one of the biggest advantages of goal alignment.

It’s easy for goals to go awry and for even the best employees to lose sight of important goals. By focusing on aligning your talent with your strategy from the top of the org chart to the bottom, you can ensure none of your employees ever lose sight of what is important.

Discover Your All-Star Employees

Employee turnover is expensive, time-consuming, and very annoying. Losing a great worker can set you back between 20 and 213 percent of the employee’s annual salary, depending on their position on the corporate ladder. While paying this hefty price tag is inconvenient to say the least, losing people – and therefore the considerable effort and resources you put into finding them – is worse.

Thanks to goal alignment, you can keep an eye on the work of your employees and reward people appropriately. Employees who understand how their contributions fit into the organization will be more engaged and motivated to turn in good work. And by discovering and rewarding your all-star workers, you’ll cut down on office politics, reward the right people, and motivate your whole workforce to do better.

Using social media or other tech tools to find the right people for your organization might be all the rage, but if your people aren’t aligned with corporate goals, you’ll end up losing them to disengagement and turnover. Focusing on goal alignment means understanding your workforce, communicating more clearly, and keeping your all-star employees engaged with company goals.

What do you think? How do you use goal alignment to find and keep the best people? Share in the comments!

By Andre Lavoie