Communicating Company Goals To Employees: 16 Tips For 2024

One of the most important things you should communicate with your employees is your company’s goals. To ensure success, your staff need to understand what you want the business to achieve, and how you plan to do achieve it so that they can be part of the same journey.

Why is it important to communicate company goals to employees?

Quite simply, if your employees don’t understand what the goals are, how can you expect your goals to be met? Goals can also change over time, so if the company has a new strategy or is taking a new direction you need to make sure this vision is shared with employees in a way that is clear and easy to understand.

No matter what industry you work in, fostering a shared vision among employees at every level of the organization means that they have an understanding of how their own role and their team or department contributes to the overall success of the company.

Unfortunately, many employees don’t feel as though they understand their company’s goals. According to research from Gallup, 40% of employees say they don’t know what their company stands for, while just 50% say that they feel connected to their company’s mission.

By communicating your company goals you can:

•       Get buy-in from your employees
•       Generate enthusiasm for your proposed outcomes
•       Build accountability and trust with your employees
•       Deliver better outcomes for your customers
•       Have a more productive and profitable company
•       Increase levels of employee engagement
•       Have better decision-making processes
•       Create a strong brand as an employer of choice.

Tips for communicating company goals to employees

1. Make sure your goals are clear

It’s important that your goals are clear and easy to understand. Avoid jargon and buzzwords. Find someone impartial – a friend or family member – who doesn’t really understand the ins and outs of your business and see if they understand what your goals are. If they can’t, you need to make them more simple. New hires in your company, for example, aren’t going to know what you’re talking about and many existing employees may not understand either.

2. Make sure your goals are realistic

Your company goals should be realistic and ones that your employees can reasonably achieve. When they aren’t attainable, your employees will become demotivated and won’t even try to reach them.

3. Get the whole leadership team on board

The leaders in your company need to be reminding people whenever appropriate what the goals of the company are. Not only that, they need to model behavior that is consistent with achieving the goals. If employees perceive that leaders don’t really believe in or understand the goals they’ll be less inclined to do so themselves.

4. Use a variety of communication channels

Your company goals shouldn’t be in a document that you file away somewhere and never look at again: you need to communicate them in a variety of ways using different internal communication channels. Repetitive messaging in different formats can help with message retention.

5. Share updates and success stories

When you are on track to reach your goals, or if you have met them, you need to let people know. Send regular updates to your employees letting them know how you’re tracking. For example, you can use desktop tickers or company newsletter articles to keep people informed.

6. Performance plans should reflect company goals

When your managers and employees are developing individual performance plans, it is appropriate that each individual plan should reflect and align with the company’s overall goals. This helps each employee to understand what part they play in delivering successful outcomes and ensures accountability.

7. Managers should talk about company goals with employees

Whether it’s a team meeting or a one-on-one conversation with employees, your managers should identify opportunities to remind employees of your company goals and talk to their team members about how to make them a reality.

8. Recognize staff who achieve company goals

Your organization’s employee rewards and recognition program should be used to acknowledge any individual employees who are responsible for meeting or helping to meet company goals. This is a good way to remind your team just how essential the goals are to the company.

Read more about thank you messages for employees.

9. Make your goals visible

Your goals shouldn’t be buried away on a page on the internet or your corporate plan: make them a focus in your workplaces.  Using tools like corporate screensavers and digital signage displays, you can display the goals in a way that employees will see all the time, reminding them of what you need them to achieve.

10. Survey your employees

How can you be sure your employees understand your goals and vision? You can survey them either as part of larger employee engagement surveys or by specific, targeted, climate surveys asking questions about what they understand the company’s goals to be.

11. Have ambassadors and champions

In most companies, there are outgoing, popular, respected staff members with a lot of influence over other employees. These are the types of staff members you can identify and recruit to be ambassadors or champions of your company goals so that they inspire and encourage other employees to achieve and contribute to meeting goals.

12. Every strategy and project should align with your goals

If your strategies and projects don’t align with your company’s overall goals, why are you doing them? All the work that your company does should be done to help the company to meet its goals. Whether that’s regulatory compliance, sales success, delivering great customer services, or being a leader in the field.

13. Make goals part of internal branding

Many companies have internal branding – the fonts, colors, slogans, designs and images that reflect the company’s image. Sometimes they are the same as the external branding, sometimes they are slightly modified so that employees can easily tell the material they are viewing is for an internal audience. There are ways to incorporate the goals in your internal branding, for example printing them on to mouse mats or coffee mugs, using some of the goals as slogans or making corporate artwork that incorporates them.

14. Your CEO should regularly update how the company is meeting goals

People want to hear from the person in charge. When the person in charge is seldom heard from, employees down the line will find it hard to relate to them – and that includes their goals and vision. Find ways for your CEO to address employees, such as via in-person meetings, webinars, or town halls. Your CEO should also directly address employees when your goals are met – or even if they aren’t met – to keep them informed and engaged.

15. Make videos demonstrating staff achievements

Many people prefer visual communication to written – it helps them to better understand the information that is being presented. Instead of talking about or writing about goals, you can show employees in action doing work that achieves those goals. Videos shouldn’t be too long but are a great inclusion on your intranet, your corporate social media and to send via pop-up alerts.

16. Celebrate success with employees

When you reach your goals, it’s important to acknowledge them. One of the best ways to do this is by celebrating and including your employees in the celebrations as a way of saying thank you for their contributions to that success.

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Getting your employees to understand and share your company’s goals is one of the best ways to ensure that you can actually achieve them. Overhauling your employee engagement and internal communication systems is one of the best places to start.