SMART GOALS EXAMPLES FOR WORK: UNDERSTANDING IT IN PRACTICE AND IMPLEMENTING IT IN YOUR COMPANY

Have you seen many good examples of SMART goals for employees? It’s often the case that the setting of goals for a company is never easy if it’s not done properly.

There is frequently the risk of leaving something important to one side and instead focusing on unnecessary tasks. Setting goals that attend to several aspects of a company are almost always beneficial, but there are some disadvantages in trying to perform too many goals at once.

The reason being that they can often be poorly planned and even if you achieve your goal, it may not provide any significant long term benefit to the business.

And as Peter Drucker would say:

“There’s nothing more useless than doing something right that didn’t need to be done.”

Another example is when people set goals that are not achievable. Although they can inspire and engage employees in the beginning, they often lead to frustration and disappointment when they are not realised.

That’s why you need to get to know about SMART goals, a methodology created to be more effective when setting goals.

Check out some Smart goals examples for work to put into action in the day-to-day life of your high performance teams.

What are SMART goals?

In practice, SMART goals can be defined as the ideal solution to help people, teams and companies define where they want to go.

These goals are established following a standard and specific guidelines, that can be easily remembered using the acronym SMART.

Each letter represents a word that should be part of each goal,

• S – Specific
• M – Measurable
• A – Achievable
• R – Realistic
• T – Time bound

Setting good examples of SMART goals for employees, which are always differentiated when compared to simple goals, will help bring maximum results to your company and your team. But how to create that kind of goal in your day to day tasks?

How to develop SMART goals?

To work on the development of these goals, you need to know in detail the meaning behind each of the words related to the acronym SMART.

By defining objectives your SMART goals will become increasingly simple. All you need to do is create a goal that satisfies each of the conditions as the following will demonstrate.

S = Specific

Good objectives cannot be vague and have double meanings. So to set a SMART goal you need to have a clear and simple intention. For example, instead of saying “this year I want to have a perfect body”, you could say “I’m going to lose 10 kilos in the next 60 days”.

You can see how the example is much more specific and therefore provides a better goal? Over time, we have got in the habit of creating goals that are too vague. Therefore to achieve concrete results, it’s important to be more specific.

M = Measurable

Here the focus is to understand that we always need to set measurable goals, therefore able to be measured. Target tracking is an important part of team and business management.

It allows you to set milestones that can be celebrated when you achieve them and also reevaluate when they have not been met. It is critical to always have some aspect of your goal that can be numerically measured and evaluated.

A = Achievable

Many people fall into the trap of setting impossible goals for themselves or their teams. While impossible goals can push you forward for a while, you will certainly give up on them at some point.

Instead of impossible goals, your goals should be challenging, but always achievable. Before setting a goal, make sure that you or your team really have the chance to reach it.

R = Realistic

Not all goals have the same value. Unless your goal is realistic to your strategic plan, achieving it may mean nothing.

To make sure your goal is realistic, make sure it is worthwhile, make sure achieving it will provide positive benefits to the business, and make sure that this goal is consistent with the other goals the business has.

T = Time Bound

Good goals need to have a time limit associated with them. For example, instead of saying “I want to start reading more books,” you could say “In the next three months, I’ll read two books”.

The person who has set the second goal will be much more motivated to succeed, since they have a specific time span in mind to achieve it.

Also, realize how this second goal fits perfectly into the SMART standard! Besides being time bound (T), it is very specific (S) and focused on a path, it is measurable (M) both in terms of time and quantity, it is easily achievable (A) and also realistic (R). After all, a good book can provide help to anyone.

6 Examples of SMART goals

On the subject of the practical part of writing down your SMART goals, it’s a good idea to note down each of these requirements and write a sentence or two about how your goal fits in with each of them.

If you can write a goal that meets each of these conditions, you will have a SMART goal and a change of approach that will help you much more than a usual standard goal.

Let’s check 6 good examples of SMART goals for employees, that can function as a template for creating your own version:

1. Hire 5 more people for the sales area by December this year;
2. Reduce by 50% the cost of new equipment acquisition in 6 months;
3. Double the number of blog posts on the site in 4 months;
4. Increase sales by 20% in November compared to the same period last year;
5. Increase the average Google rating by 30% in the next 3 months;
6. Invest 15% of the previous semester’s profit in 4 courses for employees in the next 2 months.

Looking at each of these examples of SMART goals and analyzing whether they meet the requirements we set will help you understand how to develop your own goals.

Siteware develops STRATWs One, a company performance management software that among other features allows you to set your goals and monitor them in real time, thereby generating greater transparency, order and engagement in your business.

Our system is capable of transforming into procedures of management methodology adopted by your company. Thus, you can ensure a larger cohort in day to day planning and increase productivity. This results in more decision making certainty.

Currently, there are more than 162,000 users of our service, in more than 1,000 companies in 20 countries. One of our success stories is Dotz, which with our tool has succeeded in improving HR processes and strengthening the corporate culture.

Get to know STRATWs ONE and see that the tool could be the missing step for your company to prosper even more!

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