When employee and company goals are misaligned, it can create friction and even cause decreased team performance and productivity. This is especially true in a climate where new technology is rapidly changing the way people work and how they see themselves fitting into their organizations.
The team here at Bridge sat down with Christopher Lind, a former CLO turned L&D consultant, and our conversation touched on the impact of AI and how employees understand their roles.
What Is Employee Misalignment?
If employees don’t understand how their roles contribute to your organization’s purpose, goals, and values, that’s misalignment. It creates friction and can cause decreased performance and productivity.
While employee misalignment is an age-old phenomenon, technology is changing expectations, roles, and skillsets. This can compound the confusion many employees feel when they’re not sure about their role within their teams.
“We’ve been through a lot, with the internet, the smartphone, all that stuff,” Christopher says, “and now we’re in the AI age.”
While many employees will believe this new era holds great promise, they may also be confused about how to keep up and continue adding value to their organizations.
“Everything you thought you knew might not apply anymore,” Christopher explains.
“Technology has just radically changed. And then on top of the change itself, tech is moving at a pace where humans struggle to keep up with it.”
When organizations fail to create an environment that allows employees to contribute productively in this new landscape, they risk their long-term competitiveness and resilience.
“Technology is changing the way organizations operate. But at the end of the day, it really boils down to the people that are driving [technology],” Christopher says.
He explains that a myopic view on new technology won’t cut it. He advocates for a comprehensive approach that incorporates “business, technology, and human experience.”
“If you don’t understand how those three ingredients come together, you’re in for a world of hurt, as many organizations have found out.”
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How to Recognize Employee Misalignment
Keep an eye out for some of these signs of misalignment in your organization:
1. Workplace Tension
A misaligned employee can quickly become a resentful employee. If they don’t feel that they’re heading in the same direction as their peers or have trouble seeing a common goal, dissatisfaction can bleed into negative workplace behavior. Look out for tension, disagreements, and office gossip.
When teams are misaligned, it’s likely that they want different, conflicting things, making it harder for them to connect and bridge empathy gaps. A poor connection will lead to poor results. Project delays and failed team projects are telltale signs of misalignment.
2. Poor Employee Communication
Poor communication between employees will lead to confusion and may set your teams on the wrong path. This is particularly relevant when technology like AI is introduced, as it can impact every function at every level. In Christopher’s words, it’s an “amplifier” and can highlight and worsen existing issues.
In his work, Christopher finds that there’s often a generational difference in how people approach AI. This is exacerbated by poor communication and can cause teams to misalign on their essential daily tasks. More experienced workers may fail to communicate basic information because they mistakenly believe that AI can assist less experienced workers with key tasks, or even do their work for them.
“The newer generation coming in are feeling pain because a lot of organizations assume they should be good [at a given activity] because AI can do that for them.”
But without foundational knowledge communicated by more experienced staff, these younger professionals will not have the skills they need to make the most of AI tools.
They might think, “I’m not sure I can ask AI to do something, because I don’t really know what to ask it, and I don’t know how to assess whether what it’s telling me is correct or not,” Christopher explains.
“On the flip side, senior people can look at AI and assume that just because it can fill in their gaps or it does things faster, that it’s doing things more effectively.”
When more seasoned professionals move up the career ladder, they lose sight of how crucial business tasks are actually executed, which results in poor knowledge sharing with less experienced colleagues.
“They’ve gotten disconnected from what all the moving pieces are,” Christopher says.
3. Lack of Employee Empowerment and Engagement
An employee who doesn’t feel empowered in their role and who feels like they’re unlikely to be listened to is one who may stop trying to be heard. Their insights and valuable suggestions could be lost, and they may never seek to improve the ways in which they engage with others.
Speaking to managers and function leads about whether or not teams are willing to share ideas can help you assess engagement levels. If you spot a lack of engagement, it’s a major red flag.
4. Employees Missing Deadlines
There’s a variety of reasons an employee may not meet target sets for them. This can include workplace stress and their personal circumstances, but it can also be an indicator that they don’t believe the work they do has value or that they don’t understand the impact their actions at work have on other teams. This is why struggling with deadlines—particularly chronically missing due dates without explanation—is often an indicator of misalignment.
Chatting to managers and function leads about this metric can be very helpful. Often, it can be hard for leaders to judge when an employee is emotionally disconnected from their work. However, answering a simple yes or no question like “Does your employee meet deadlines?” is usually easier. This gives you the insight you need to work with leadership on cultural changes or to offer more support to individual colleagues.
5. Overwork and Burnout
Doing work without believing in its value is not satisfying to most people. If your employees are running to stand still, this might indicate that your company has a problem with alignment. Work with managers and function leads to keep an eye on the following warning signs:
- Falling behind on key tasks or not completing them at all.
- Failing to communicate with their teams. This can include ignoring emails, direct messages, or being unusually disengaged during calls.
- A drastic and unexplained change in workplace attendance.
How to Build Organizational Resilience Through Company Alignment
Improving alignment across your company can yield significant rewards. So how can you improve alignment in your company and, consequently, improve the resilience of your workforce?
Here are four ways to better align your organization:
1. Offer Comprehensive Training, Including AI Courses
Christopher explains that employees may be overwhelmed with the sheer amount and speed of change. There’s a lot of noise around AI, which can distract employees from building on the knowledge and skills they already have.
“A lot of people feel lost because they just can't differentiate between what’s consistent and what’s changing,” he explains.
“They think: I’m just getting the hang of what I did yesterday, and now you’re telling me that I need to do it differently.”
This is why structured and strategic training is key. Skipping out on teaching foundational skills that are core to your industry will not yield results over time.
“One of the big misnomers about technology is that it’s a shortcut, that you can skip steps,” Christopher says.
“Well, technology may speed people up. It may smooth over some of the bumps. But at the end of the day, people still need to understand context. They still need to understand the basic foundations of what you’re doing. They can’t just have AI do tasks for them—it won’t help if they don’t understand the foundation they’re building on. You can’t just jump from A to Z. It doesn’t work that way,” he explains.
At the same time, employees need training on what AI can do to make their daily tasks easier and to drive business targets forward. It’s a good idea to provide comprehensive courses on how AI can and should be used.
Working with stakeholders across your business to teach both foundational skills and AI best practices is the best way to stay ahead.
2. Find Common Purpose Through a Vision Statement
Aligned teams feel their own work is connected to the company’s success. And it is—but many teams struggle with making that connection. You need a mission and vision to articulate a common goal throughout your organization, as this will give meaning to each employee’s work.
It’s a good idea to work with senior leadership to come up with a vision statement that you can share widely across your organization. It also makes sense to close the gap between those values and employees’ daily tasks. Make sure that function leads and managers understand how to translate organizational values to what an employee should be doing day-to-day. This will empower them to understand how their role contributes to the organization’s overall purpose, what they should be focusing on, and how they should collaborate.
Now that technology is shifting the ways we work, employees may experience their organization or even their tasks as more complex than before, and it doesn’t hurt to provide explicit direction. In Christopher’s words, it’s all about empowering every individual to make the best choice in their roles day-to-day.
“It’s becoming more and more important that you equip people to understand how to make wise decisions and understand where, when, and what they should and shouldn’t do,” he says.
3. Keep Employees Talking
There will be employees in your organization whose opinions carry greater weight among their coworkers. It makes sense to identify these “influencers” to create opportunities for them to provide mentorship. Ensuring that these influential people understand business targets and values, and empowering them to connect with peers, will go a long way.
It’s also important to create psychological safety so that employees can share feedback with leadership. Empowering managers with time for regular one-on-ones can encourage open and honest communication.
It’s particularly important that managers discuss how their reports’ current and evolving skills contribute to the organization’s targets. While employees should be aware of goals, helping them keep track of improvements as they upskill can be more motivating than a performance metric. This is why Bridge offers detailed data insights on every employee’s upskilling journey. Consistent manager support can make all the difference.
“You need to help people lock in and show them what their capabilities are,” in Christopher’s words.
“Employees need a consistent feedback loop to answer questions like: ‘Am I on the right track? If not, what do I need to do to get back on the right track? And how do I keep evolving and advancing?’”
4. Change the Narrative
It’s no secret that chronic misalignment in the workplace can lead to negativity. A bit of positive reframing can go a long way, especially when leaders are committed to improving the situation for employees. When staff struggle with a that-can’t-be-done mindset, leaders should be encouraged to change the narrative to: “I know that these tasks are difficult. How can I help you take the first step?” This kind of conversation can help both leadership and individual contributors understand how they should collaborate to get key projects moving.
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Looking for More Ways to Build Organizational Resilience?
Overcoming misalignment or building organizational resilience isn’t easy, but it can be done.
To discover the five steps you should take—and the five to avoid!—download our eBook “5 Factors That Fuel a Resilient Workforce.”
