Another weekend is upon us even after a few days of public holidays. Determine to be fully rested by the end of this weekend. Don’t rush around too much. Rest is always a good launching pad. When we are not rested, we are operating on auto pilot and everything becomes a knee jerk response, not strategic and not well thought out.
Speaking of things being well thought out, today we are looking at Mission and Vision statements and the role of HRM in organisations. A Mission statement should define your company’s business, objectives, and approach to reach them. The Mission is a company’s reason for being, the purpose it serves and the value it provides to its audience or stakeholders. It also articulates why your company is different and how it positions itself in the market.
A Vision Statement describes the desired future position of your company. The Vision is what a company strives to be in the future, not where it is today. This is an aspirational, broader, future statement. The Vision is intended to be motivating, inspirational, and forward-thinking and may even evoke emotion. Elements of Mission and Vision statements are often combined to provide a statement of the company’s purposes, goals and values.
Defining your company’s mission, vision and values informs the strategic planning process. Mission, vision, and values embody who a company is and what it stands for. These foundational attributes are at the heart of the organisation — defining its purpose, charting its direction for the future, and describing expectations for ethics and behaviour. The best statements are unique and concise. They should be clear statements, not just paragraphs.
Once you define your organisational mission, vision, and values, then you can determine your strategic objectives and goals in pursuit of the mission. Strategic imperatives and objectives should always be tied to your organisation’s mission and aligned with its vision and values to ensure the company is focused on the right business activities.
When you are defining your mission, ask yourself, what do we do today? Where you have been as a company? What product or service you offer and how you offer them? What value you create and who do you serve (i.e., who are your stakeholders)? How are you different from your competition?
When defining your Vision, ask yourself, who you want to be in the future? What do you want your business to look like 10, 50 or 100 years from now? Who are your key stakeholders? What kind of image do you wish and hope to have? How aggressive are our goals?
Concerning your Values, what principles are most important to you when running your business? How do you wish to treat your customers, employees, and shareholders? What behaviours and/or ethics are non-negotiable and should always be upheld?
HRM plays a significant role in three ways. Development, communication and leading by example. Due to HRM’s role and pulse on the organisation, they should be a part of the core team along with other senior leadership who develop and define your company’s mission, vision and values.
They should do this by seeking input from employees, customers and other key stakeholders. HRM should also be involved in refreshing these concepts, as they are reviewed as your company evolves and sets new goals as time goes on.
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HRM should be tasked with ensuring employees understand and can articulate the company’s mission, vision and values through clear employee communication. They should develop an internal communication plan. Work with your corporate communications, corporate strategy and marketing teams to develop communication goals and straight forward key messages.
They should determine which communication methods are best for your organisation. Examples of communication methods include emails, all-employee meetings, staff and team meetings, company intranet, videos of employees talking about what the mission, vision and values mean to them, social media, blog, posters and more.
HRM should not forget about your external audiences. Be sure to incorporate mission, vision and values messaging into your hiring processes and channels such as the company’s careers webpage. What a company stands for is a major part of its employer brand. This is a prime opportunity to make a positive first impression on your candidates and showcase what your company is about, which can be a factor in attracting top talent.
Finally, company HR professionals should lead by example by demonstrating ethical actions and behaviour on how to live out the mission, seek the vision and, most importantly, model core values for their peers.
HRM are the custodians of all such statements and must steward them and ensure they are living statements and not just words on a piece of paper or a plaque on a wall.
Please join me in celebrating all HRM personnel for the awesome, often thankless job we all do in the various organisations. More grease to you singular and collective elbows.
