You may find your company vision inspiring, but do your employees? Does it encourage every team member to put their best foot forward? If not, you’ve got some work to do.
If your company’s vision resonates with employees, they’ll gain a sense of purpose that makes them more engaged. In turn, you’ll be more likely to actualize that vision.
No company is founded without some sort of vision. But putting it in just the right terms can be tough, much less keeping it top of mind on your team. Check out the following ways to make your vision hit home with your employees>
1. Connect the vision to your employees’ values.
Employees sometimes have trouble connecting their values to their work. This can lead to apathy, burnout, bare-minimum work, and frequent turnover. If this spreads across the team, even leaders can fall into this mode.
The solution? You need to show how it connects to their values. Workers generally gravitate toward careers that align with their values. Having a vision that aligns with those values is critical.
Performance reviews and team building sessions are great opportunities to do this. Think of them as chances to get to know your employees better and ask about their values. Once you find those connections, you can make them clear to your workers.
Furthermore, identifying your employees’ values can open up different avenues for accomplishing your vision. Community involvement, for example, is a great thing to incorporate into your vision. Considering that your employees are community members themselves, they’ll see tangible impacts of their work.
2. Include your company’s culture.
Your company vision shouldn’t be some lofty statement disconnected from your workplace. A holistic vision should connect to the environment of your company.
Make sure your vision statement includes taking care of people. You might get specific by mentioning:
- Fair compensation
- Generous PTO
- Healthy office relationships
- Leadership and growth opportunities
- Recognition for good work
- Freedom to take risks
- Diversity in the workplace
Factoring employee care into your vision will help workers see themselves in it. Who doesn’t want to work for a company that cares about them?
3. Embrace transparency.
In just about any company, hierarchies exist. While hierarchies can enable efficiency, they can also obscure information and seed distrust between employees and their leadership. These tensions can jeopardize the team’s cohesion.
In a transparent work environment, information flows freely. By extension, employees are more likely to share their perspectives and feedback. And with this culture of trust, workers are better able to align themselves with the company’s vision.
Transparency is easy to call for but tougher to implement. Leaders must be willing to share the good, the bad, and the ugly. Workers must take bad news in stride.
4. Reference the vision in planning sessions.
Following from transparency, employees must see your company’s vision carried out in its work. During planning meetings, point out the connection between each plan of action and the vision. That way, individual actors see how they are contributing.
Not only does this make employees feel significant, but it reinforces your company vision by making it tangible. Pointing to specific components of yours when making decisions speaks volumes to the team.
5. Pass it down through mentorship.
Mentorship is a great approach to professional development, but it’s also valuable in the context of your vision. By pairing employees who have already internalized the company vision with those who are just starting out, you ensure your vision trickles throughout the team.
You don’t need a rigid mentorship structure to make this happen, either. Informal one-on-ones, like lunches, spread your vision more surely than top-down commands. There’s no need to play drill sergeant when it comes to promoting your vision.
6. Tell stories.
Storytelling is part and parcel of making your company vision resonate. Humans are story-driven beings, so tell a vision story your employees can relate to.
Think about the way that your company began: Did you start it in your garage, highlighting your company’s hardscrabble ways? Maybe an angel investor gave you a leg up, speaking to your vision of lifting others up.
Keep an eye out for times when you can tell these stories. They can happen at retreats, meetings, or even one-on-ones. Keep it fresh by weaving in fresh insights based on the occasion. As long as they are genuine, you’ll help people resonate with your vision.
Remember, your vision isn’t only — or even mostly — for you. Your team needs regular reminders of why you do what you do. If you can articulate your vision well, you’ll motivate your employees to go above and beyond.
