THE VALUE OF HELPING YOUR TEAM UNDERSTAND THE IMPACT OF THEIR CONTRIBUTION

 In Featured, News

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I have previously mentioned how understanding the impact of one’s work can be an incredibly motivating factor to help lift the performance and engagement of your team.

People like to know that what they spend their time doing matters.

We have all had the demotivating experience of spending weeks or months working on a large-scale project, training program or report and discovering that it just ended up sitting on your boss’ shelf collecting dust. You feel like you have wasted time and effort and that your work isn’t valued.

Equally, a number of people, especially in functional rather than customer-facing roles, find it difficult to understand how what they specifically and personally do every day enables the organisation to be successful. Yes, there might be organisational scorecards to measure performance and determine their annual bonus, but what are they especially doing to help the business perform? It is difficult to feel connected to the purpose of the organisation and appreciate why it is important to be the best possible Head of Talent Acquisition or Finance Director because they don’t understand how their organisation helps others.

It is also interesting to note that studies have shown that one of the most important factors to motivate, engage and retain top talent is to ensure they feel they personally contribute to the organisation’s bottom line and that they ‘make a difference’.

Giving someone a concrete picture of their work’s impact can be self-affirming as well as motivational. For example, someone working in the corporate office of a pharmaceuticals or medical products company may not appreciate the impact that working in an organisation who invest heavily in R&D are driven to help people live better lives for longer.

So then that Head of TA knows they need to make sure that they hire the best scientists who can develop incredible solutions and the hungriest sales and marketing people who can make sure the world knows about those great solutions and so on. Equally, the Finance Director is fully aware that making processes easier for the R&D team to have the money and resources they need sufficiently available to put into development is helping to deliver amazing results and help save lives. How much more inspiring and outcomes focussed is that? Additionally, it also helps to drive the right behaviours because people understand the ‘Why’ of what they do.

Even if the results of your employees’ work aren’t so tangible, giving them specific names and stories of those who’ve benefited from their efforts can offer insight into the impact that their work does. Every single person contributes to that outcome. Use actual customer profiles and stories that bring the impact that the organisation has on others’ lives to reality in a way that your employees can relate to. So take the time to talk to your talent or finance team about the customer who is a parent that drives a car that is safer thanks to the quality and diligence of the mechanics, engineers and shift supervisors on the assembly line. The key is to make a direct and relateable connection from the employee to those who benefit from their work.

How do you help your team understand the ‘Why’ of what they do and ensure they know their contribution matters?