Align employees to your strategy

Any successful company has a strategy. But often times, top management struggles with ensuring that employees understand a company’s strategy.
Mr Nicholas Ogola, a business consultant in Kampala, says a strategy deals with the interplay of three forces: customer, company and competition. Such a strategy should state the key business objectives and who is accountable for each objective and the mechanism for achieving them.
Mr Ogola says aligning employees’ roles to the company strategy part helps them understand their responsibilities to contribute to the success of the company.
A business strategy is a documented plan on how an organisation sets out to achieve their goals. It contains a number of key principles outlining how a company will attain these goals.
“It explains how to deal with your competitors; it looks at the needs and expectations of customers and examines the long-term growth and sustainability of the business,” Mr Ogola adds.
Without a good strategy, a company will be dragged down.
A company that employs good talent has more chances of achieving the company’s strategy compared to one that employs mediocre talent.
He says involving employees helps identify trends and opportunities in the future and examine major changes in market such as political, social or technological changes, as well as consumer changes, and employees can develop tactics so your business can modify and develop to suit these future changes.
A business strategy creates a vision and direction for the organisation. A strategy can provide this vision and prevent individuals from losing sight of their company’s aims hence creating a competitive advantage over other suppliers in the same industry.
Ms Ruth Tumwiine, a business administrator, says every manager should turn employees’ work into performance by spending time with them to establish how they can be used to fulfill the company’s objectives.
“This is achieved through timely and consistent communication directly to all employees.”
She says employees need to have skills, motivation and an enabling environment to turn their potential into performance.
“Employees must be made aware that what they do affects the company’s strategy and must therefore work hard to help the company achieve its objectives.

key talent

For employees to work well, they should be in the right job that enables them to exploit their full potential.
Ms Tumwiine describes talent management as using strategic human resource planning to improve business value.