Recognise This! – In a sea of priorities, help employees focus on your business goals through positive recognition and reinforcement.

Conversations with the Corporate Executive Board revealed organisational development is at top concern and priority for HR pros, which isn’t surprising to me considering recent research from Aon Hewitt:

    * 12% of respondents said their leaders are extremely effective at meeting business goals
    * 14% believe their leaders are extremely effective at meeting profitability targets
    * 17% say the same holds true for delivering service
    * 7% believe their leaders are extremely effective at retaining talent

Just for shock value, let’s read that another way. At least 80% of workers don’t think their leaders are very good at meeting business goals, profitability targets, or service. 93% don’t think their leaders can retain talent.

Those are shockingly high numbers, and yet – I’m not shocked. CEB research suggested one way to overcome these challenges was in getting the business goals valued highly across the organisation. This makes sense – if the majority of people don’t put the same sense of importance on achieving a business goal that you do, they’re not going to work as hard to achieve it.

So how do you communicate the importance of some goals over others such that all employees buy into them? Recognise and reward behaviours, actions and achievements that advance those business goals and ignore those that don’t. Communicate positively and frequently in this way to people what it is that you need them to focus on and you’ll be surprised at how quickly their priorities will come into line with your own.

Are you shocked by these numbers as reported by Aon Hewitt? Would you say the same is true in your organisation? What would you do help leaders become more effective at meeting business goals?