Three recommendations for clearly communicating your company’s strategy to employees

Picture this: After much fanfare and planning, a company rolls out a new strategy to their employees.

The message doesn’t land.

Employees scratch their heads and move on to their tactical to-do lists. Progress against the new strategy stalls before ever really coming out of the gate.

This kind of internal communications breakdown is incredibly frustrating – but also not uncommon.

In their recent Harvard Business Review article, Constantinos C. Markides and Andrew MacLennan provide three recommendations for clearly communicating your company’s strategy to employees – recommendations that resonate with our Waterhouse team as we work to help our life science clients maximize workforce engagement:

1) Place the chosen strategy in the context of rejected alternatives

At Waterhouse, we recommend any internal strategy rollout starts with the landscape of strategic options considered, to help employees understand the universe of factors that influenced leadership’s ultimate decision.

2) Link the strategy to company purpose 

With many life science employees opting into our industry due to an intrinsic desire to drive impact for patients, don’t be afraid to inspire! Heavily reinforce how your updated company strategy will accelerate progress towards evolving or improving patient care.

3) Engage employees early and often

It’s easier to enroll employees when you take them along on the journey. This could be as robust as cross-functional team participation in the decision making process, or occasional all-team pulse surveys to collect real time feedback.

If you have a significant company pivot on the horizon – or a current strategy that needs a reboot – please reach out! We’d love to help you drive workforce inspiration and enrollment.