Creating effective goals for your employees can be hard. To set effective employee goals you should:
Create goals in consultation with your employee. As you discuss and refine the goals, you're exchanging "bigger picture" information about both of your expectations, and coming to consensus.
Tailor the level of detail you capture to your employee's needs. A more senior or autonomous employee will need less detail than a less experienced or less independent employee.
Write goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound (SMART).
Make sure that goals are achievable both individually and as a group. Assigning too many goals, even though each one might be achievable on its own, sets the employee up for failure.
Start with the end result in mind and clearly identify how success will be measured.
Always link individual employee goals to the higher-level organizational goals they are designed to support, so the employee has a clear context for their work.
To help you out, we've created an employee goal setting template that prompts you for all the information you should discuss and document when setting goals with your employees.
Related Resources
Want to keep learning? Explore our products, customer stories, and the latest industry insights.
Blog Post
The unbreakable link between performance management and employee engagement
The concept of employee engagement, around since the early nineties, was first introduced in “Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work” in the Academy of Management Journal.
Research
Thriving in the Global Skills Shortage
The new realities of work are creating long-term impacts — good and bad — for your organisation and people. The organisations that aren't struggling to navigate this uncharted wilderness succeed because they focus on developing the skills of their people.
Video
Client Excellence Awards: Volvo talks about its ‘Performance Touchpoint journey
Volvo won the Visionary in Performance Management Award at this year’s Client Excellence Award at Cornerstone Convergence EMEA. Here, Veronique Seurat, Capability Manager for Talent & Performance Management at Volvo Group HR, discusses the company’s transformation journey with Cornerstone and how Volvo changed the mindset of its employees and made performance a priority.