Your organization needs cultural, technological, and generational strategies to adapt to workplace trends

S.H.A.P.E. is a five-step talent management tool designed to help you retain and develop people as the business climate shifts and changes in unprecedented ways.  So far in our S.H.A.P.E. journey, we’ve learned how to properly assess talent and create an effective people management strategy that maximizes your team’s strengths and capabilities.  However, to ensure the effectiveness of the first two steps, you must ALIGN your talent for best results.

At a high level, aligning your team means making sure every employee is on the same page.  More specifically, it’s about training and motivating your team, to ensure the organization is agile enough to address evolving client needs and respond to the ever-changing world of work.  And, given the many different ways workplaces are transforming in response to the pandemic, aligning your team is also about managing your company’s successful transition into the future of work (e.g., remote operations, advanced technology, team restructuring, etc.).  Some team members will thrive, others will struggle.  But there’s a lot that you can do to help most employees succeed.

The importance of alignment

So, why focus on alignment?  In short, this is the best way to ensure your team is on your side.  When you focus on alignment, 90% of team members understand how the company defines success, 86% understand the company strategy, and 75% of employees feel empowered to make decisions.  Proper alignment helps team members feel connected to the company purpose and understand how their work impacts overall business performance.  This results in a more engaged team, and engaged teams are 21% more profitable than their less motivated counterparts.

How to align your team

Aligning your team requires a three-pronged strategy in which you focus on culture, technology, and generational differences.

Culture

It’s imperative that you understand your culture.  In the first two steps, SEE and HAVE, you’ve done some of this work – you’ve assessed the team, you’ve anticipated growing pains and roadblocks, and you’ve built a plan to get people in the right positions.  But you also need to ensure you’ve got the right pieces in place to create a positive, high-performing culture.  As you examine your workplace, consider the following:

• Is your mission relevant to the modern business environment or does it need to change?
• Is your mission clear?
• Do you have a culture that responds well to rapid change?  And if not, what steps do you need to take to create that culture?

As an example of a mission that’s out of step with the times, look to the grocery store chain Albertsons.  In 2013, its mission statement was vague: “To create a shopping experience that pleases our customers; a workplace that creates opportunities and a great working environment for our associates; and a business that achieves financial success”.  To be fair, Albertsons has since updated its values page with commitments to sustainability and diversity and inclusion.  But back then, its mission wasn’t industry-specific, and it didn’t speak to the modern customer’s expectations of convenience and expediency.  Without a goal that’s relevant and specific, how will employees know what to work toward or fight for?

Aligning the team requires clarification of the mission.  The strategy must be clear, and it must be revisited frequently in meetings, conversations, and corporate communications.  Managers must also connect the dots and help team members understand how the mission will help the organization (e.g., better business, increased innovation, improved customer loyalty, etc.).

And lastly, leaders may also need to rethink how decisions are made internally.  For example, if there are too many people involved in making a single decision, it could make the process inefficient and each of those decisionmakers could walk away with a different interpretation of the situation, leading to confusion as they communicate with people in the lower ranks.

Technology

With more and more companies embracing remote work, technology is playing an even bigger role in day-to-day operations.  Though this may seem like an obvious shift, not every employee will be open to the change, and strong alignment will require education about how humans and technology can work together to produce results.

Leaders must steer team members toward new collaboration tools and explain how those tools will be incorporated into existing best practices.  For instance, meetings may now be taking place on Zoom, but the team is still expected to follow the same meeting structure and use the same meeting agenda documents.  It’s also important to help them trust technology and assuage their fears that they’ll be replaced by it.  This means helping them understand how AI and machine learning will make their jobs easier (e.g., by handling repetitive tasks and freeing up their time for mission-critical jobs) and showing them how digital tools can help them maintain connection and collaboration from different locations.

Also, be sure to use the most current technology available, in accordance with your budget.  If you don’t, you risk frustrating, and even losing, employees.  Millennials are the most likely to quit because of a company’s substandard technology.

Generational differences

Aligning your team means creating a game plan that accounts for the differences in how people of all ages work.  This will ensure everyone feels included, and it will help you determine what roles these team members will play in the company’s transition.

Some things to consider:

• Millennials expect to be nurtured and developed.  They want to be challenged, excited, and engaged in work that has a higher purpose.  They also want flexible work conditions.
• Gen Z workers care a lot about work-life harmony, inclusive culture, and positive work environments.  They prefer self-directed, independent learning over mandated coursework.
• Gen X and older workers require structure, are more motivated by pay, and think employers should play a significant role in initiating training or reskilling.

These differences could mean that you need to tie the company purpose to both increased revenue and social responsibility.  It could mean you need to offer a mix of mandated training and self-guided courses.  It could mean offering a voluntary work-from-home policy that Gen Z and millennials can use but that older workers are free to abstain from.  In short, your plan to align the team can’t be cookie-cutter.  Your approach has to be multifaceted to address the varying needs of your staff.

Aligning your team for the future is tri-fold.  It’s cultural, in that everyone must understand and drive toward the same mission and purpose.  It’s technological, in using updated tech and helping everyone understand how that tech will make the workplace better.  And it’s generational – every group’s needs must be addressed so that you can speak to them in terms they understand.  Alignment doesn’t mean telling people what to do.  It means using nuance and strategy to unite everyone toward a common goal.