Setting employee goals is a very challenging yet responsible job. Usually managers set goals for their teams and themselves.
But isn’t it really time-consuming to go through each of your employees’ performances and come up with appropriate goals for them? And watch them struggle with fulfilling these unrealistic goals and do it again the next year? Well, we all have been there.
At Engagedly, we use a very popular approach for goal setting: OKRs (Objectives and Key results) and we cannot stress it enough that no matter what the approach is that you follow, goals need to be SMART and motivating.
Also Read: Engagedly For Managing Your Remote Team: Goal Setting And OKRS
It is important to understand in this era of COVID-19 pandemic that time is money. The way we work has completely changed. It has become important to stay connected always and work towards a collective goal and fulfil it. This is not possible if you do not align your goals and your team goals with the organizational goals. For all challenges in goal setting, you need a platform that helps you ease the burden.
But before you choose a goal setting software for your company make sure that it has these three elements in it.
Alignment
It is not understandable to many who are new to the concept of setting employee goals, why aligning these goals to a bigger goal is important. When you are implementing a goal setting software in your organization, it should have a way to add and manage organizational goals, department goals and individual goals.
These individual goals should be aligned with department goals for employees to understand how they are contributing to the departmental success. And in turn these department goals should be aligned with organizational goals for departments and team members to understand their role in the bigger picture.
Flexibility
Goals keep changing based on results from time to time. It is important for a goal setting software to be flexible enough to let employees edit their goals and objectives.
Sometimes, in an organization or in a team it becomes important to cascade a goal to employees at different levels or to share a goal with them. So, it is important to choose a software that allows easy sharing and cascading of goals. Flexibility is one of the most important aspects that you should look for when trying to implement a goal setting tool in your organization.
Also read: What are Objectives and Key Results (OKR)?
Transparency
While goal alignment and flexibility imply that there’s transparency, it is important for a software to provide an easy and way for managers to keep track of the progress of their employees on the goals that have been assigned to them.
Goal tracking is important to understand if the goal set for an employee is right. It allows you to understand if it is appropriate for employees to have a goal that has a certain level of extremity to it.
As a manager it is important for you to choose a goal setting tool that allows you to set goals, align them, modify them and track them when necessary.
If you want to know more about goal setting, request a demo and get in touch with our experts.
Engagedly is offering a suite of products part of its Remote Work Toolkit free to any organisation, until Sept 30th, 2020.
The Coronavirus has affected the way we work today and for months to come. Unprecedented events require unprecedented measures. We at Engagedly believe it is our responsibility as socially conscious corporate citizens to help equip organisations with additional tools and resources during this time of crisis.
Get in touch with us to know more about the free remote work toolkit.
Author
Srikant Chellappa
CEO & Co-Founder of Engagedly
Srikant Chellappa is the Co-Founder and CEO at Engagedly and is a passionate entrepreneur and people leader. He is an author, producer/director of 6 feature films, a music album with his band Manchester Underground, and is the host of The People Strategy Leaders Podcast. He is currently working on his next book, Ikigai at the Workplace, which is slated for release in the fall of 2024.