The Need

for
Alignment
SARAH THANGADURAI, PHD
Learning Outcomes
Aligning business purpose and strategy

Align employee with the role

Align employee roles within the team

Align the team with other teams

Align culture with strategy

Ensuring cultural alignment

Organisational Alignment
Align organisational efforts and objectives with support teams both internal and external to its
command (Boss, 2018)

Compatibility between the two paths and consistency with them – the values and behaviours held in the
organisation should be compatible with strategic goals; employees’ day-to-day behaviours should be
consistent with the values that they and the organisation try to espouse (Shoobridge, 2019).

What do organisations need to align?

◦ Clear and meaningful purpose
◦ Clear goals
◦ Practical strategies to achieving goals
◦ Daily (even hourly) plans and priorities that kept organisations on track toward executing the strategy
◦ Metrics that defined success
Aligning business purpose and
strategy
Aligned with mission, vision statements with employee input which will enhance business
performance

Case study:
1. Review how Hilton is committed towards aligning its purpose with strategy

2. Now, review Marriott’s core values and discuss how the hotel aligns its purpose with strategy

3. Compare the two hotels and their purpose and strategies

Align employee with the role
Qualifications of employees to take up a role within hospitality: job specifications, job descriptions

Employee welfare, support etc. Marriott Hilton Wyndham

If employees are not aligned with the role, they might not be happy with their job and might quit,
retaliate, be dissatisfied, not perform.
Align employee roles within the
team
Provide clear job descriptions, tasks and deadlines

Stress the importance of teamwork and interdependence in hotels (e.g., within and between
departments)

Discussion:

Share your past working experience and relate that with how your roles have been similar/different
from other team members within the team
Align the team with other teams
Communication with other departments

Discussion:

Discuss how your job/task has been interrelated with staff members from other departments within
your previous workplace

What are the key factors that affected your interaction with them?

How do you solve issues that arise between two team?

Align culture with strategy
Creation of a high-performance culture that is fully supported by strong leadership
communications, great people management skills and a fully-engaged workforce
(Shoobridge, 2019)

Occurs when strategic business goals and people’s cultural values and behaviours are
mutually supportive

Employees must feel connected, involved, supported and therefore engaged with the
organisation (Alagaraja and Shuck, 2015)
Individual performance as the dynamic
outcome of alignment–engagement linkage

Source: Alagaraja and Shuck (2019)

 Ensuring cultural alignment
Linked to workplace morale - the level of rational, emotional, motivational and devotional engagement among employees

Cultural Alignment Checklist:

• Mission: Define or clarify your organisation’s set of guiding principles; the identity, purpose and philosophy of their raison d'être. Any strategic
plan will fail if it is not supported by these prime principles of the Core Culture.
• SWOT Analysis: Assess your organisation’s internal Strengths and Weaknesses and the external factors (Opportunities and Threats) that can
impact cultural alignment success.
• Vision: Set an aspirational description of what your organisation would like to accomplish in the future by setting specific, quantifiable
strategic goals. Market strategies should be consistent with organisational guiding principles, and seen as such by employees.
• Objectives: Decide the strategic priorities that align with those goals. Unit objectives should be derived from organisational strategy and
supported by management practices.
• Internal standards: Clearly define a set of corporate values and behaviours to drive and align with the desired organisational strategy. People’s
day-to-day activities and behaviours should be consistent with the mission, strategy and values. Build an action plan with precise measures to
guide employee performance. 
• Alignment: Turn the strategic and cultural paths into measurable results. Ensure organisational policies support business activities through
employee behaviours.
 Cont..
Reinforce Organisation’s Core Values and Behaviours

• Leadership commitment: Lead by example; culture loses its credibility when leaders talk the talk but don’t walk the walk and when they
lose sight of what the values mean to the organisation, employees and the customer experience.

• Awareness training: Teach the values through relevant and practical, not just passive and theoretical, training. Allow employees to embed
organisational values by doing and connecting them to the wider business strategy.

• Internal Communications: Reinforce the values in all communication including all-hands meetings, newsletters, intranet, visual
promotional materials and collateral, email signatures, etc. Ensure alignment between internal and external messaging.

• External Communications: Incorporate the values into your sales process (i.e. in proposals, sales collateral, sales pitches, LinkedIn
profiles, etc.) to shape the customer experience. Incorporate the values into your hiring process (i.e. equality, diversity and inclusion
policies, etc.) to ensure recruiting diverse teams that will align to the organisation’s desired culture.

• Internal recognition: Reward employees who demonstrate values-centric behaviours. Incorporate the values into your performance
review process.

• Provision of feedback: Implement a real-time 360-degree peer-to-peer feedback system on values and behaviours to allow individual
employees to devise their own corrective actions.
Conclusion
Organisational alignment consists of aligning strategies and people with goals.

Job-person fit, person-team fit, team-department fit, cultural fit are crucial aspects to enhance
organisation alignment/success

Leadership plays a crucial role in making successful alignments

References
Alagaraja, M. and Shuck, B., 2015. Exploring organizational alignment-employee engagement
linkages and impact on individual performance: A conceptual model. Human Resource Development
Review, 14(1), pp.17-37.

Boss, J., 2018. A simple flow for thinking about organizational alignment. Forbes [online], 21 January
2018. Available from:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffboss/2018/01/21/a-simple-flow-to-think-about-organizational-alignm
ent/?sh=7378372f3df4

Shoobridge, G. 2019. Critical steps for aligning strategy, people & culture. [LinkedIn]. [Accessed 7th
June 2022]. Available from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/get-employee-buy-in-build-exceptional-
culture-dr-gonzalo-shoobridge/
Further Reading
Alagaraja, M. and Shuck, B., 2015. Exploring organizational alignment-employee engagement linkages and
impact on individual performance: A conceptual model. Human Resource Development Review, 14(1),
pp.17-37.

Giudici, M. and Filimonau, V., 2019. Exploring the linkages between managerial leadership, communication
and teamwork in successful event delivery. Tourism Management Perspectives, 32, pp.100558.

Mohanty, A. and Mohanty, S., 2018. The impact of communication and group dynamics on teamwork
effectiveness: The case of service sector organisations. Academy of Strategic Management Journal, 17(4),
pp.1-14.

Safavi, H.P. and Karatepe, O.M., 2018. High-performance work practices and hotel employee outcomes:
The mediating role of career adaptability. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management,
30(2), pp.1112-1132.