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Establishing goals is not an easy task – especially if you wish them to actually be achieved. A recent study showed that only half of organizations effectively work to define goals. Read on to see some individual performance goals examples.
If at anytime you have wondered why it is so difficult to achieve business goals, now you’ll know the reason. In this post, we approach how you can, and should, proceed to create, establish and set individual performance goals examples for your employees, in order to improve motivation, satisfaction and productivity in the organizational environment.
Enjoy the reading!
Understanding the difference between a goal and a good idea is a very relevant first step. Let’s say you need to draw up a marketing plan for launching a new product. You may start your goal setting plan from that task, writing “Draw up a marketing plan to promote product XPTO”.
But there is a catch: something established like that is not an actual goal. It is only a good idea. It would be a good idea to create a marketing plan, but how does that translate into an actual goal? Easy! Effective goals must include the description of “how” and “when”.
As it is an unfinished sentence, the good idea does not provide information enough to be, in itself, a goal. Thus, a timeline and guidelines must be added thereto, so it becomes feasible, in practice.
If written as a goal, that same good idea may get much better.
Note this example of an individual goal based on that idea:
“Prepare, by Friday, the first version of the marketing plan for product XPTO, containing from 3 to 5 pages and dedicating about 30 minutes daily to the task”.
Managers are not there only to help employees to achieve their own professional goals. Ideally, those goals are aligned with global organizational goals.
However, such alignment may get difficult if you don’t understand the strengths, weaknesses and the elements able to motivate your team.
Devise ways to increase communication, mainly while major projects are in progress, and follow the progress of each employee, to identify weaknesses and aspects to be improved.
When employees understand how their functions and individual responsibilities contribute to general growth, they tend to get more focused in attaining goals that benefit themselves and the company.
Thus, consistently communicating your business strategic goals (by emphasizing and highlighting values and management culture) may help create a self-managed team.
Establishing and setting individual performance goals is not enough. According to surveys by Gallup, only half of employees understand what is expected from them.
And what is even more worrisome: according to the same survey, a large amount of managers are also not able to appropriately define what the purpose of their professional performance is!
That is actually a shocking consideration. If a professional is not aware of what they should attain within their job, they are then only taking up space in the company.
To combat that scenario, you should include your employees in the goal setting process. If they are aware of their strengths and weaknesses, they will be able to assess their performances and settle intentions and commitments on a regular basis, considering the general business context.
Thus, you increase the odds of jointly establishing attainable goals.
“Dream big” is actually not a useful metaphor in professional performance management. What is most important is practical experience and setting attainable goals.
Although having ambitious goals should not be considered something bad, they may negatively impact employees morale and commitment.
In order to prevent that, you should apply personalized or specific criteria when setting goals for your team, preventing professionals with different characteristics of always pursuing the same individual goals.
Maybe you have certain goals in mind for each team member, however, asking employees to identify goals specifically related to the functions they perform will provide you with more educated answers.
There is a big qualitative difference between imposing goals to be met and encouraging employees to offer suggestions.
Performance goal setting examples are very common when some managers believe if they behave so, their team will go beyond themselves to attain at least part of the result. Actually, that should discourage employees.
Making employee individual goals and your business general context converge is important for qualifying the productivity of the work performed. As a matter of fact, expectation transparency is one of the most elementary professional requirements, and is also vital for collective results. Take that idea one step further, by administering career discussions.
When assessing and discussing performance goals with an employee, find out if they are happy with their current function, and if they wish to progress in their job. Keeping employees looking towards the future will make their efforts more significant.
Appreciating goal achievement is a motivating factor that should not be neglected, as reaping the benefits of professional qualification may take quite a substantial amount of time.
A good idea is offering rewards whenever a goal is attained. Those rewards may come as a bonus, pay rise, an additional day off – the possibilities are almost endless. You should at least make time to personally congratulate your team’s success, either during meetings or in the presence of the whole company or department.
The final goal setting step consists in closely following what you created. Review your goals often. For major goals, once a month may be appropriate. For short-term goals, however, make sure the review is weekly or even daily. Mapping deadlines on a calendar, creating updateable task lists and using logs are excellent ways to stay on the right track.
Additionally, constantly reviewing your goals contributes to them getting updated, constantly motivates your employees, and also prevents you from skipping important steps in the process. Establishing goals, dedicating time and effort to them, brings the reward of awakening all your business potential.
Always remember when and how! Note that they are present in each of the individual performance goals examples here:
Did you like the article and the individual performance goals examples we provided? Then share this post in your social networks and help other people to establish their business goals!
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