3 ways to align your team to your business goals

Is your team ready for FY26?

Whether EOFY is a big deadline for your business, or just another day, we love the optimism and opportunity associated with a fresh start and a new (financial) year is as good as any!

This month, we’re sharing three ways you can ride that new beginning energy to support your business goals for FY26.

1. Clear roles = clear goals

Here’s the thing, your people will find it hard to meet (or exceed) your expectations if they don’t know what they are. Communicating expectations comes in many forms, but one tangible way, is utilising  clear, up-to-date, and outcome-focused Position Descriptions (PDs).

This year, ensure each of your team has a clear, concise view of their responsibilities and how their success will be measured.

Well-structured PDs are more versatile than you might think, and are a valuable tool for:

• Developing engaging, accurate and holistic job ads
• Having objective and aligned feedback conversations
• Encouraging reflection against expectations for a performance review process
• Providing transparency and direction for career progression by allowing team members to see what responsibilities and requirements form part of other roles in the team

So, if your team don’t already have PDs, or they’ve not seen the light of day for some time, spending some time creating or updating can set your team up for success in FY26.

Start by asking yourself:

• If I was hiring this role fresh, what experience, qualifications or attributes would I look for?
• What are the 3 or 4 key outcomes or responsibilities core to this role?
• What tasks or behaviours are particularly important to highlight for this role?
• What would I see or hear if this role is successful?
• How does this role interact with others? Is it clear where accountability and responsibility sit?

2. Prescriptive progression pathways

If an effective suite of PDs provide the basis of career progression considerations and conversations, then a career development framework makes things explicit – leading the horse to water, and showing it how to drink!

It has long been an expectation of business owners and people leaders that individuals should take charge of their own careers; seeking out and proactively asking for opportunities or putting themselves in situations to progress. And while this is definitely still the goal, having a more structured approach for your team to work within ensures you know their aspirations, and they can understand what opportunities are (or could be!) available. And overall creates a more equitable process.

In our experience, a structured career development framework can work as a practical guide for professional growth. It clearly outlines the role-specific and values-based competencies (skills, knowledge, and behaviours) your team needs to succeed, and helps to:

• Support individual growth and training by demonstrating what is required to progress
• Understand unique motivators and challenges of your team members
• Explore completely different paths of interest within the business (while retaining knowledge and cultural contribution)
• Create a consistent, fair approach to development conversations and opportunities supporting diversity and inclusion
• Identify gaps or areas to bolster when recruiting.

Think of it as a clear roadmap that helps you see where your team is now, where they’re heading, and how to support their growth in a way that fits your business goals.

Start by asking yourself:

• What are the core competencies and behaviours are required for each role?
• What stretch tasks, projects or development opportunities exist in the business and what roles might these be appropriate for?
• What would someone need to demonstrate or achieve to be comfortable they are ready for progression?
• What budget (time and/or money) do you have to dedicate to team development?

3. Strategic org structures

It’s not just a flow chart or a hierarchy, if your team structure isn’t quite right, you’ll usually feel it. Common signs?

Business owners juggling multiple roles, managers with too many direct reports, too many meetings or rework because communication is not flowing.

Your org structure is one of the most underrated tools for performance and clarity. It makes a huge difference in how work gets done and how people feel while doing it.

When you go through the process of evaluating your org structure it gives you a visual of the roles you currently have, the responsibilities that are being covered (and by who) as well as where the gaps are.

Start by asking yourself:

• What does your structure currently look like?
• Do you have the right roles to support your goals for FY26?
• What are current challenges and strengths with how your team structure is operating?
• Are roles misaligned when you consider the:
  
  • function - is your Finance Manager also trying to keep on top of your HR compliance and culture development?)
  • workload - are workloads too high or too low?
  • incumbent – do you have the right people in the right roles?

Do you people leader roles have capacity (and capability) to lead the size of team they have? From there, you can spot what needs to change, whether it's re-distributing functions, removing headcount, upskilling your team, deciding to outsource or making a new hire.

Ready to start building your people plan?

If you don’t have time or headspace to spend reflecting and building out each of these people projects – we would love to help!

From PDs to team structure, career mapping and recruitment support we’ve got you. Book a chat with one of our HR Partners to get started.

Get in touch.

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