Aligning Employee Behaviour to the Company’s Interest
Editorial by Alberto Gabbai Chairman of the Board of Cezanne Software
The main purpose of Talent Management and of Employee Performance Management is to ensure that the interests and behaviours of employees are aligned in the best possible way with the strategic goals and key targets of the entire company.
This is easier said than done. Any top level executive would probably complain that alignment is insufficient, in spite of all of the good intentions and effort. However, a large part of the cost of personnel, certainly all of the incentive compensation, is aimed at achieving such alignment.
And it’s not just compensation; quite a few of the other HR activities, from performance appraisal to employee relationship management, and from career planning to training and development, are aimed at the key goals of ensuring that employees not only work hard, but that they do the things that are really important for the organization, and that they are motivated and fulfilled in doing them.
This is the real meaning of Employee Performance Management. This is what makes the role of the HR function profoundly strategic. This is what many companies work hard at, often with limited success.
As vendor of a technology that is an enabler of this process, it would be nice for me to be able to say that the solution lies in the use of the right technology. Unfortunately, the technology is only an enabler: no matter how big a support such an enabler can provide, there are underlying factors that are more critical, and that need to be addressed by management at all levels.
Obvious as it may sound, the most important factor is to formulate a clear, consistent and fairly stable mission for the entire organization, including its core values; one that goes beyond the banal and generic like ‘high quality’, ‘customer satisfaction’ and ‘shareholders value’, which do not represent a mission for the simple reason that, if they did, every company would have the same mission.
How many companies have a meaningful and stable mission, one that is easily understood, engaging, and most importantly, completely consistent and aligned with the company’s plans and directives? Less than one would think.
If you are one of them, then the next most important factor is to communicate relentlessly; to ensure that all levels of management and all employees receive the same messages, that the implications of such communication is meaningful and consistent, that all people receive the message, understand it, and have the opportunity to respond positively.
Any serious mission or strategy entails a definition, explicit or implicit, of the key capabilities, qualities or competencies that are critical to the company. Another very critical factor in improving the alignment of employee behaviours with the company goals, is the consistency of HR policies with regard to such key capabilities, qualities or competencies. Do most companies seek such consistency when they hire, when they promote, when they make development or career decisions? Perhaps, but I would bet that there is a big space for improvement there.
The same concept is even truer, probably, for decisions regarding compensation, individual or group goal setting, calculation of variable compensation and the like. There is no more powerful way to communicate, and no more messy way to miscommunicate, than to do so with compensation decisions. What things like raises and incentive goal setting tell an employee is usually stronger than what conventions, speeches, pamphlets or emails tell him.
Finally, last and maybe least, but not irrelevant, the technology is also a factor. Without it, it would be impossible to keep track of all of the information and to support decisions regarding performance and compensation, capabilities and competencies, development and promotions, and to ensure that all decision are made in a coherent and optimized way.
