Improving Organisational Alignment
Organisational identification and values are robust factors that have been consistently associated with a wide range of employees’ work attitudes and behaviour. They are valuable tools to pinpoint issues related to lack of fit and poor cohesion which can result in counterproductive attitudes and behaviours, putting strain on entire teams and the organisation itself. Tracking these factors within and across teams adds value to strategies aimed at ensuring a cohesive, committed, and healthy workforce.
This is why we have created the Values Alignment Index ™ and the Identity Alignment Index. This work has been produced under guidance from Durham University who were commissioned to advise on how best to measure and analyse levels of Identification and Values within and between teams.
Values Alignment Index ™ Survey
Our Values Alignment Index™ survey is made up of four factors and a total of 12 questions, based on research conducted into Values, and allows you to measure the degree of alignment between individuals, teams and across the organisation.
Our values are the things that are important to us in our lives. One value may be more important to one person than another, but these values influence how we behave with each other and the world around us. Relationships at work matter, so it’s important to understand how aligned our values are with our work colleagues and surrounding teams, as this can influence team cohesion, harmony and performance.
This tool can be used to support recruitment (understanding the degree of alignment of any potential new recruits with the existing team), as well as for employee engagement (measuring the degree of values alignment between teams)
Identity Alignment Index Survey
Our Identity Alignment Index survey is made up of three factors and a total of 12 questions, based on research conducted into Identity, and allows you to measure the degree of alignment between teams.
Work engagement is likely to fluctuate over time, be determined by multiple factors, and not always easy to capture (which is perhaps why there is dissatisfaction with the predictive power of conventional measures of employee engagement). Being engaged may mean different things for different people, and for the same person at different times.
In contrast, the extent to which we identify with our work, our organisation, our company, is far more resilient to such fluctuations. Identification is a measure of how much we have internalised our work into who we are – our sense of self. If we feel high degrees of organisational identification our company is literally part of who we are. This means we are bound to its success, fight for its success, and live its success (and failure) – because when our company prospers so does our inner sense of self-worth. All this means identification will be far less likely to fluctuate over time and in different situations. It will therefore be far more predictive of work-relevant behaviours – and so a far more valuable tool for assessing engagement.