How to align employees to your company’s mission statement?

Mission Statement, two big words that every company needs to pay attention to heavily in order to reach recognition in the business world. Each of these two words is very valued on its own, and when combined even show more strength and importance. The first word, Mission, which tells you we are talking here about a target, an objective, an aim that the company is pursuing and has as its first objective. The second, Statement, which also asserts that this is what is all about this company, it is the fact, the reality, the statement the company is trying to put out to the world.

To illustrate this more, wikipedia’s definition goes as follows: “A mission statement is a statement of the purpose of a company or organization. The mission statement should guide the actions of the organization, spell out its overall goal, provide a path, and guide decision-making. It provides “the framework or context within which the company’s strategies are formulated.” ”

Voila! If you haven’t yet realized the importance of a mission statement, or if your company doesn’t have one, then i highly advise you go ahead and create one, or look up some experts who can assist you in its creation. In fact, companies spend a lot of time and effort, and money on the development of these sentences.  And it is usually constructed based on three key elements: your target market, services/products you are contributing to this market, as well as how are your services/products unique.

Now that we have defined the mission statement, its structure and importance, it is essentially in the best interest of the company, or more let’s say if the employees do not understand and follow it, then it will be just as worthless as if you don’t have it! All your employees need to understand the three basic fundamentals of your company and your mission statement;

Let us put it this way, if your employees do not understand who your customers are, or who your target market is, how will they be able to serve it well? of course not all employees need to understand all the bits and pieces of the market, but at least get a grasp of who you are targeting with your products, otherwise they will fail to understand the product and/or service. And this applies more importantly to your customer facing employees, such as sales, customer service, etc…

Also on another aspect, if your employees do not understand your service, then how can they be effective in providing and developing such service or product in the best way possible?

And finally, especially true for sales and customer service people, if they do not understand how your product and service differentiates from competition, you and they will fail with your clients.

Now how do we align employees to the company’s mission statement? well there are various methods of accomplishing this, which include making sure that:

• It is well written and in a language that anyone would be able to understand
• It is unique so that it doesn’t apply to any other company in your domain
• Employees are aware of such a mission statement
• You train your employees on abiding by its key sections and how they relate to serving your customer, in the best way, and differentiating from others
• You evaluate your employees based on its key sections
• Your leadership team more than others has to have the mission statement at the top of their minds, daily!
• Make it available to everyone, shown as posters around the company, and included in conversations or proposals to clients

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