Tag: employee goals and objectives

Top 5 Employee Goals And Objectives to Advance Your Career

Setting employee goals and objectives is a common practice among organizations worldwide. To get the most out of your employees, you must give them goals they can work towards. This not only keeps them motivated but also maintains high performance levels. 

Here are the 5 Examples of Professional Goals For Work 2025.

Goal#1: Bring More Creativity To Work

As the corporate world continues to become more competitive, creativity keeps on gaining more significance among employers. Creativity can impact how well your employees can implement their tasks. Because it contributes to the development of the company, organizations are increasingly showing interest in cultivating employees’ creative thinking. And you don’t want to fall behind. So this year, creativity should top the list of your employees’ goals and objectives.

Though creativity is not something that can be taught, few proven practices can make your employees think out of the box. Interestingly, some of the practices are as simple as walking, learning a new instrument, and even just sitting at a place doing nothing at all.

Here is what employees need to do:

  • Go for a 30-minute walk, 3 times a week, after work. Don’t listen to music or be on call while walking. The primary focus would be the surroundings
  • Pick up a new hobby or learn to play a new instrument. Dedicate at least half an hour to it in a day
  • Every day, spend some time away from technology. Read a book or just do nothing

Make sure your employees develop these habits by the end of this quarter.

Remember, everyone is creative in their own ways. So, putting some effort into nurturing your employees’ creativity will eventually pay off.

Goal#2: Learn People Management

Employees goals: Learn people management

Every organization has employees of different age groups, backgrounds, and ideas. That means every employee’s way of working is different. To ensure everyone in a team is collaborative and a team player, organizations must include people management skills in their employees’ individual goals and objectives.

People management skills include strong communication, the ability to motivate others, patience, problem-solving, positivity, and honesty.

Some examples of practicing people management skills are:

  • Provide teammates or peers with feedback at least once a month until the end of Q4
  • Recognize one colleague’s work effort weekly by sending them an encouraging email for the next 6 months
  • Encourage inclusive work culture by involving everyone in a monthly brainstorming session till the end of this year
  • Involve employees in a monthly problem-solving session where every employee will solve one critical problem, given by their team leads or upper management, for the next six months

By improving people management skills in your employees, you build effective future leaders within the workforce.

Also read: Your Guide to Performance Management

Goal#3: Hone Your Negotiation Skills

Negotiation skill is vital for every individual in a business. It helps in reaching common ground in case of any confrontation and improves relationships in the workplace. Negotiation is also important for career growth.

Some of the characteristics of negotiation skills are- knowledge of the subject matter, listening skills, ability to express thought verbally, general intelligence and judgment, and patience.

Developing negotiation skills in employees must be a priority for 2023

To develop this skill, your employees need to:

  • A negotiation course
  • Find a good negotiation coach and have a monthly or biweekly meeting till Q4
  • Every month, keep an hour aside to try out new negotiation skills with a peer, until the end of this year

Coursera provides negotiation skills training “Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills”. In this course, your employees will learn about and practice the 4 steps of negotiation: Prepare (how to plan negotiation strategy), Negotiate (how to use key tactics for success), Close (how to create a contract), and Perform & Evaluate (the end game). Coursera also provides a Course Certificate on the successful completion of the course.

Goal#4: Practice Decision Making

employee goals in 2022/2023

Decision-making is a critical skill for anyone in an authorized position. So having a workforce that can make quick yet good decisions is something that makes an organization stand out. That’s why your employee goals and objectives list for 2025 should have decision-making in it.

Though it is a difficult skill to develop, if your employees actively involve themselves in the process, they can achieve significant long-term results.

What your employees need to do to improve decision-making skills:

  • Invest at least an hour every week to learn some basics of probability. It helps in improving one’s decision-making skills
  • Do not postpone any difficult decision that you are required to make for the next 3 months

Udemy offers an excellent course named “Decision Making: Mistakes, in Probability and Statistics,” which can improve your employees’ decision-making skills. This course is specially built for leaders and managers.

This course offers learnings on- common mistakes made in probability for everyday judgments and decisions, the psychological biases and fallacies that make us conclude wrongly, and how to use probability effectively during decision-making.

Also read: Here’s Why Your Employee Rewards & Recognition Fails

Goal#5.: Focus On Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is one’s capability to recognize, manage, and use their own emotions in positive ways to empathize with others and overcome challenges. It helps you build stronger relationships at work and achieve your career goals. As a result, emotional intelligence becomes a critical skill for collaboration and working effectively in a team. 

The skills involved in emotional intelligence are- self-awareness, motivation, social skills, and empathy.

To improve emotional intelligence, your employees:

  • Need to practice self-awareness thrice a week through self-reflection, noting down feelings and experiences, and reflecting on behavior throughout the year
  • Must practice active listening and pay attention to non-verbal cues when communicating with others
  • Must use an assertive style of communication (communicate opinions and needs without being aggressive) for the next 3 months

Many organizations are now switching to performance management software to automate and enhance setting up of employee goals and objectives. These tools provide real-time data on goals achievement and further help to increase employee accountability and transparency in the system.

Learn how Engagedly can help you set employee goals and objectives. Schedule a free demo!!

Request A Demo

Unleash Success: Achieve Goals with Goals 2.0

Wondering what’s Goals 2.0? Allow us to explain. 

Success in the hectic world of business isn’t accidental. It is the outcome of thorough preparation, wise decision-making, and effective execution. Goal setting, a fundamental practise that helps organizations move towards their desired outcomes, is at the heart of this process. Businesses pave the way for growth and success by establishing clear objectives and coordinating efforts to achieve them.

Here’s an interesting fact: According to a Harvard Business research, people who establish precise goals are ten times more likely to achieve than those who do not. Yet goal setting benefits more than just people; it also benefits organisations. According to American Management Association data, firms that successfully develop and communicate goals have a 21% gain in profitability.

These startling numbers highlight the critical role that goal setting plays in generating organizational performance. Setting goals goes beyond wishful thinking and turns desires into practical actions. Goals provide purpose, engage teams, and promote an accountability culture by offering a path for development.

In this post, we will look at the importance of goal setting and how it may alter organizations. We’ll look at how adopting a complete goal management platform, such as Goals 2.0, may transform the way organizations define, manage, track, and achieve their goals. Prepare to discover the secrets to unlocking your organization’s full potential and going on a road to unprecedented success.

Crush Your Business Goals with Enhanced Transparency, Collaboration, and Alignment

Setting, managing, tracking, and achieving goals are essential aspects of any organization. However, it can be a significant challenge to ensure everyone is aligned and working towards common objectives, especially in large organizations with numerous teams. That’s where Goals 2.0 comes into play – the most comprehensive goal management platform designed to transform the way organizations operate and propel them to higher levels of success.

Draft Goals for Better Alignment

Draft goals

Aligning everyone in your organization with common goals is no small feat, particularly when different teams have contrasting viewpoints. With Goals 2.0, you gain access to an amazing feature that allows you to create multiple drafts and share them with stakeholders to ensure proper alignment before publishing the goals. This streamlined approach to goal management and alignment has never been easier.

Extended Collaboration

Engagedly Goals 2.0-Extended Collaboration

Previously, collaboration among teams was a complex and time-consuming process. Goals 2.0 changes that by making collaboration a breeze. Goal-setters can invite team members, managers, and other stakeholders to comment, review, suggest, and provide feedback on the goals – both before and after they are published. Simply tag the necessary stakeholders using “@” and witness how cross-functional teams react to each other’s goals quickly and decisively. Furthermore, juggling and altering goals becomes a cakewalk with Goals 2.0.

Goal Setting Module

Less Effort, More Effect

Seamless and essential integrations with platforms like Salesforce, JIRA, and Google Sheets make life easier for your employees. No more duplicating reports or data – simply update the progress on the respective platform dashboards, and all the data gets synced flawlessly in Goals 2.0. This integration eliminates errors and ensures progress information remains intact without any mismatches. Managers and decision-makers gain instant insights from different platforms, enabling them to measure progress and success effortlessly on a unified dashboard.

Milestones for Delightful Goal Achievement

Welcome to the world of (S)milestones, where even big and complex goals become delightfully easy to achieve. By splitting Key Result Areas (KRAs) into milestones, your tasks become well-defined, bringing unprecedented clarity to your journey toward accomplishing your goals. With Goals 2.0, you can assign or change owners for milestones and key results, fostering a happy environment where goals are consistently reached with ease.

Aligned and Contributing Goals

Aligned Goal Hierarchy view

In Goals 2.0, you can set both aligned goals and contributing goals. Aligned goals are those that align with the overall organizational objective but do not contribute to any other goals. They run parallel to the overall goals set. Aligned goals do not automatically become contributing goals; they must be marked separately. Contributing goals, on the other hand, are those that directly contribute to another goal or a set of goals established by the organization. These goals play a vital role in achieving the overall organizational objective and driving organizational success.

A Helping Hand

With Goals 2.0, no one in your organization will feel helpless. The Support for Collaboration feature allows individuals to seek assistance or guidance in the process of achieving their goals. Whenever someone gets stuck, all they need to do is tag the person they need help from – there’s no need for any other channel of collaboration. Watch your organization work together like a well-oiled machine.

Goalistic Picture

Engagedly Goals 2.0-Goalistic pictureBeyond individual and team goals, understanding your organization’s goals is crucial for everyone. Goals 2.0 provides a bird’s-eye view of the broader organizational goals, business units, departments, team members, and individual goals – all at a glance. The Milestone Propagation feature in Goals 2.0 gives you a holistic picture, adding more sense and purpose to your efforts. Imagine the wonders this comprehensive view can do for everyone’s performance.

A Walk in the Park

With Goals 2.0, you can save time and effort by importing and cloning goals. If you have goals maintained in Excel sheets, you can effortlessly import them into Goals 2.0 and continue from there. No need to recreate them from scratch. For recurring goals or those with minimal changes, you can clone previous goals, make the necessary edits, and publish them. It’s as simple as that.

All at a Glance

Visual graphs represent your goal targets and actual progress, allowing you to quickly assess where you stand in accomplishing your goals. Gain insights into your expected and current progress, empowering you to reorient your approach if necessary and ensure timely goal attainment.

Feedback to Drive Results

Engagedly Goals 2.0-FeedbackPromptly responding to goal progression makes a significant difference to individuals, teams, and the entire organization. Goals 2.0 includes a feedback feature that enables you to share instant feedback on your team’s progress or completion of goals. This feedback-driven approach helps your organization perform better in achieving its goals.

But Wait, there’s more …

Goals 2.0 offers an array of additional features, including setting independent and cascading goals, visually aligned and contributing goals, creating multiple goals together, organizing via tags and in-depth filters, and recognizing and praising achievements.

Engagedly’s Goals 2.0 is an intelligent, intuitive, and insightful goal management platform that enhances transparency, collaboration, and communication within organizations. With better alignment and the power of Goals 2.0, organizations can achieve unprecedented success.

So, say goodbye to goal management headaches and unlock the true potential of your organization with Goals 2.0.

Goal settings and OKRs

Top 5 Employee Goals And Objectives to Advance Your Career

Setting employee goals and objectives is a common practice among organizations worldwide. To get the most out of your employees, you must give them goals they can work towards. This not only keeps them motivated but also maintains high performance levels. 

Here are the 5 Examples of Professional Goals For Work 2025.

Goal#1: Bring More Creativity To Work

As the corporate world continues to become more competitive, creativity keeps on gaining more significance among employers. Creativity can impact how well your employees can implement their tasks. Because it contributes to the development of the company, organizations are increasingly showing interest in cultivating employees’ creative thinking. And you don’t want to fall behind. So this year, creativity should top the list of your employees’ goals and objectives.

Though creativity is not something that can be taught, few proven practices can make your employees think out of the box. Interestingly, some of the practices are as simple as walking, learning a new instrument, and even just sitting at a place doing nothing at all.

Here is what employees need to do:

  • Go for a 30-minute walk, 3 times a week, after work. Don’t listen to music or be on call while walking. The primary focus would be the surroundings
  • Pick up a new hobby or learn to play a new instrument. Dedicate at least half an hour to it in a day
  • Every day, spend some time away from technology. Read a book or just do nothing

Make sure your employees develop these habits by the end of this quarter.

Remember, everyone is creative in their own ways. So, putting some effort into nurturing your employees’ creativity will eventually pay off.

Goal#2: Learn People Management

Employees goals: Learn people management

Every organization has employees of different age groups, backgrounds, and ideas. That means every employee’s way of working is different. To ensure everyone in a team is collaborative and a team player, organizations must include people management skills in their employees’ individual goals and objectives.

People management skills include strong communication, the ability to motivate others, patience, problem-solving, positivity, and honesty.

Some examples of practicing people management skills are:

  • Provide teammates or peers with feedback at least once a month until the end of Q4
  • Recognize one colleague’s work effort weekly by sending them an encouraging email for the next 6 months
  • Encourage inclusive work culture by involving everyone in a monthly brainstorming session till the end of this year
  • Involve employees in a monthly problem-solving session where every employee will solve one critical problem, given by their team leads or upper management, for the next six months

By improving people management skills in your employees, you build effective future leaders within the workforce.

Also read: Your Guide to Performance Management

Goal#3: Hone Your Negotiation Skills

Negotiation skill is vital for every individual in a business. It helps in reaching common ground in case of any confrontation and improves relationships in the workplace. Negotiation is also important for career growth.

Some of the characteristics of negotiation skills are- knowledge of the subject matter, listening skills, ability to express thought verbally, general intelligence and judgment, and patience.

Developing negotiation skills in employees must be a priority for 2023

To develop this skill, your employees need to:

  • A negotiation course
  • Find a good negotiation coach and have a monthly or biweekly meeting till Q4
  • Every month, keep an hour aside to try out new negotiation skills with a peer, until the end of this year

Coursera provides negotiation skills training “Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills”. In this course, your employees will learn about and practice the 4 steps of negotiation: Prepare (how to plan negotiation strategy), Negotiate (how to use key tactics for success), Close (how to create a contract), and Perform & Evaluate (the end game). Coursera also provides a Course Certificate on the successful completion of the course.

Goal#4: Practice Decision Making

employee goals in 2022/2023

Decision-making is a critical skill for anyone in an authorized position. So having a workforce that can make quick yet good decisions is something that makes an organization stand out. That’s why your employee goals and objectives list for 2025 should have decision-making in it.

Though it is a difficult skill to develop, if your employees actively involve themselves in the process, they can achieve significant long-term results.

What your employees need to do to improve decision-making skills:

  • Invest at least an hour every week to learn some basics of probability. It helps in improving one’s decision-making skills
  • Do not postpone any difficult decision that you are required to make for the next 3 months

Udemy offers an excellent course named “Decision Making: Mistakes, in Probability and Statistics,” which can improve your employees’ decision-making skills. This course is specially built for leaders and managers.

This course offers learnings on- common mistakes made in probability for everyday judgments and decisions, the psychological biases and fallacies that make us conclude wrongly, and how to use probability effectively during decision-making.

Also read: Here’s Why Your Employee Rewards & Recognition Fails

Goal#5.: Focus On Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is one’s capability to recognize, manage, and use their own emotions in positive ways to empathize with others and overcome challenges. It helps you build stronger relationships at work and achieve your career goals. As a result, emotional intelligence becomes a critical skill for collaboration and working effectively in a team. 

The skills involved in emotional intelligence are- self-awareness, motivation, social skills, and empathy.

To improve emotional intelligence, your employees:

  • Need to practice self-awareness thrice a week through self-reflection, noting down feelings and experiences, and reflecting on behavior throughout the year
  • Must practice active listening and pay attention to non-verbal cues when communicating with others
  • Must use an assertive style of communication (communicate opinions and needs without being aggressive) for the next 3 months

Many organizations are now switching to performance management software to automate and enhance setting up of employee goals and objectives. These tools provide real-time data on goals achievement and further help to increase employee accountability and transparency in the system.

Connect the dots across the entire employee experience.
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10 Characteristics of the Most Effective Performance Management System

It was not long before organizations used manual methods to track employee performance. But, it was quite tedious and time-consuming, as it required managers to track the performance of multiple employees and provide a status report to senior management. Over the years, organizations have adapted to an employee performance management system that have had the capability to track employee performance annually. These systems also helped in overcoming the challenges of conventional systems like manual processing, manager bias, and time required for performance management. But there were still a lot of flaws that led to employee disengagement, loss of productivity, and reliance on the personal judgment of managers.

The introduction of advanced and performance-driven employee performance management systems has overhauled the entire process. Organizations now rely on systems that help in measuring employee performance at regular intervals and can provide innovative solutions to complex human resource challenges. An HR performance management system takes into consideration multiple factors of organizational performance and provides actionable insights for improvements. The system is scalable, organized, and offers multiple benefits, such as increased employee engagement, reduced turnover, reduced employee dissatisfaction, strategizing organizational goals, increased revenue, and focusing on DEI initiatives. 

Before we jump to the characteristics of employee performance management solutions, let us understand the problems that traditional management systems encounter.

Also Read: What is a performance management system?

Problems With the Traditional Performance Management System

The purpose of having a performance management system is to create a skilled and motivated workforce aligned with organizational goals. With the changing business dynamics, increased global competition, and green initiatives taken up by organizations, it has become imperative to have a diverse and inclusive workforce that is able to take up business challenges. 

The different types of performance management systems are helping organizations overcome the challenges they faced with traditional systems. Let’s discuss the problems faced by organizations.

Traditional Performance Management is Time Consuming

A report by CEB talks about the time-consuming process of performance review conducted by organizations annually. It shows that a manager spends an average of 210 hours a year in the process, and an employee devotes 40 hours. Cumulatively, it accounts for thousands of work hours that get wasted in the inefficient process of performance review. 

Also Read: 10 Best employee feedback tools to track performance

Ratings do not Reflect the Real Performance of Employees

The same report by CEB shows that 9 out of 10 employees are not satisfied with the performance review process. A majority of employees are dissatisfied with the ratings they get from their managers. Ratings are based on the most recent performance and don’t take into account the complete review of employee activities.

Talent Management Software

The Process is Laborious and Expensive

The countless number of hours spent in the performance review process adds to the lost revenue and administrative costs incurred in conducting the process. A report by Deloitte pointed out that their performance review process accounts for an investment of 1.8 million hours for the whole firm. Many small and medium-sized businesses are already overworked and need money for expansion and growth. Traditional performance management systems put extensive pressure on managing expenses and maintaining an efficient workforce.

Also Read: Impact of employee engagement on productivity

The Process Cannot Accurately Measure Performance

Seeing the inaccuracy and insufficiency in measuring employee performance, many organizations are starting to look for better performance management measures. A report by Gartner highlights that 81% of HR leaders are making changes to their performance management systems. Many leading business enterprises, like Accenture, Deloitte, Microsoft, Gap, and Adobe, have switched to an entirely new people management process that saves time and leads to better business results.

Characteristics of Performance Management System

A progressive performance management system is one that helps in motivating the employees and offers improvement plans to those with learning gaps. Moreover, it focuses on maintaining a higher engagement level and enhancing the skills of employees through frequent check-ins, constructive feedback, and accurate performance measurement. 

While selecting the best performance management system for the organization, it is important to understand the following characteristics of employee performance management solutions. These traits help in making a performance management process reliable, continuous, and data driven.

Also Read: 10 Best tools for employee goal setting

Fair and Accurate

A major issue with the traditional performance management system is the personal bias and perspectives of managers, which inhibits the fairness in the process. Fair and accurate performance review is done by involving multiple people in the review process of an employee.

A modern performance management system involves 360 degree feedback and reviews that incorporate feedback from multiple partners. Such a review process eliminates the personal bias and perspectives of managers and takes anonymous feedback from the concerned people.

The System Must be Efficient

An efficient performance appraisal system establishes and communicates goals and performance expectations to employees. It helps in reducing the manual efforts and overall time required to conduct the performance review process. Thereby providing accurate results for taking actions. 

Continuous, Flexible, and Intuitive

As organizations have started embracing automation, they look for performance management systems that can simplify complex tasks and are flexible enough to accommodate changing business dynamics. Performance management systems are continually evolving with technology. They offer intelligent insights based on the input data and solve multiple technical problems that is difficult for human resource managers to comprehend.

Also Read: 5 Features too look for in an OKR software

The System Must Focus on Employee Development

The purpose of implementing performance management tools is to enhance the performance of employees. It is achieved by understanding their current skill-set, challenges, engagement level, and opportunities, and matching them with the organizational objectives. 

An effective system focuses on imparting employee development plans for those employees that are lacking in optimum performance and rewarding those with exceptional performance. The system helps in gathering the employees’ information and creating a well-defined learning path for them. Even the measurement of employee development results and ROI is easier with an HR performance management system.

Learning and Development

Aligned Towards Organizational Goals

The performance of employees is directly linked with the achievement of business goals. If the workforce is not aligned to the organizational objectives then it becomes difficult to accomplish organizational goals . A performance management system aids in aligning the employee goals with organizational strategy. 

It can be achieved by setting goals that reflect the business strategy of the company. It requires taking every department and business unit into consideration while crafting the goals. Once the goals are designed, leaders have to cascade the goals down to every manager and employee in the organization. The last step is to review, monitor, and measure the success of these activities. 

Also Read: Reasons why goals setting is important

Aligned With Organizational Culture and Values

A report by Deloitte on core beliefs and culture found that “94% of executives and 88% of employees believe a distinct workplace culture is important to business success.” Organizational culture and values constitute the vision, mission, business strategy, and day-to-day interactions of employees with leaders, managers, and peers.

Employees are able to build a strong relationship and a sense of bonding with the organization when they feel like they are a part of the culture. A performance management system drives engagement, productivity, and development by undertaking multiple initiatives. It helps in building a closer relationship between an employer and their employees. It helps in creating a sense of purpose, achievement, and involvement among employees within the organization. 

The System Must Help With Goal Setting and Tracking

A performance management system helps in setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals. Research shows that setting goals in collaboration with employees increases accountability and also align individual goals with organizational goals. The check-in feature of the performance management system also helps in tracking the overall performance of team members. Thereby enhancing transparency in the review process.

Also Read: Benefits of 360 degree feedback

Integrates All Aspects of Employee Development

Employee development is a cumbersome process. It involves various parameters, like skill development, job rotation, job enrichment, mentoring and coaching, and lateral moves. As organizations grow in size, employee development gets more challenging. Thus, it requires a thorough analysis of the workforce and creating a plan for every employee. 

Using employee performance management solutions can simplify the tasks of employee analysis, learning path creation, execution, monitoring, review, and success measurement. Managers can use the performance review tools to quickly identify employee development opportunities and quickly start the process.

Customization, Security, and Integration

Integration with other HR technologies and tools is a key feature of performance review software. Because today’s businesses utilize various technologies and tools for employee management, it is important for software to seamlessly integrate and interact with other platforms to provide a better employee experience. 

Specific business demand are met by tailoring and customizing performance management software. It also ensures data security to meet global business standards.

Also Read: Common leadership challenges at workplace

Supports Learning Culture in Organization

Creating a learning environment contributes towards the growth of an organization. It helps in increasing employee productivity, engagement, ownership, and interpersonal relationships. Developing a learning culture is a long process. It requires collaboration from all the stakeholders of an organization. 

Organizations can shift toward a continuous learning process by adopting an intuitive performance management system. The focus should be on the following aspects:

  • Providing every employee with the opportunity to actively participate in their learning process
  • Rewarding and promoting continuous learning 
  • Providing resources and tools for employee learning and development
  • Encourage social learning within your organization.
  • Providing coaching and mentoring sessions to employees
  • Measuring the success of learning activities and reviewing the culture at intervals

By taking into account the above-discussed characteristics, organizations can select the most effective performance management system based on their business needs and dynamics. We hope this article has answered your queries regarding the traits of performance management systems. 

Employee Career Development

Tips To Setting Effective Employee Goals And Objectives

Employee goals and objectives are not just mere numbers for an employee. They are something to work towards, a milestone representing growth and accomplishments that motivate us. Of course, when we achieve these goals, it also benefits the organization.

Essentially, workplace goals provide employees with a purpose and job satisfaction, and for an organization, they also grant results and success. Therefore, workplace goals are integral to an organization. For a manager, here are a few useful tips for you to follow, to set goals for your employees.

Personal Improvement Should Also Be A Focus

One of the main motives behind creating goals for your employees as a manager should be personal improvement. Employee goals which help them improve and gain new skills become a good goal by default. Personal improvement is a part and parcel of an employee’s development. Employees cannot remain static.

Also Read: 7 Video Conferencing Etiquettes To Follow

Goals Should Be Attained Through Teamwork

One key to setting good employee goals is that they should be slightly unreachable. However, managers should not go to the extreme and set completely unreachable goals. If your goals are causing your employees to pull countless all-nighters or are stressing them out, they are completely missing the point. You don’t want your goals to burn out employees. You should aim for motivation.

Employee goals should ensure that employees do not work as individual contributors, but work with others to ensure the completion of goals. Goals that employees can easily meet are not challenging them enough or even engaging them. Contrarily, a goal that forces an employee to step out of their comfort zone is a goal that is challenging. And even better if the goal in question forces employees to engage with other employees.

Measure the Impact Of Goals

If we only counted goals in terms of numerical progress, then by that logic, it would be very easy to declare a goal as a failure or success. For setting employee goals, one thing you should keep in mind is measurability. It’s good if you can measure a goal in terms of numbers and even better if you can measure the impact of the goal. The impact of a goal is always a better indicator of success than the numerical status.

For example, an employee is given a goal where he needs to convince 50 other employees in the office to use a new software. In terms of numbers, if 50 employees have downloaded that software and used it even once, then the goal is successful. However, if those 50 employees stopped using the software after a period, then has the employee really succeeded at the goal?

Align Them to Organization Goals

We cannot tie all goals to team goals and the organization, that is true. However, when setting a goal for an employee, it is important to remember that as much as possible, a goal should contribute to the overall team and organization goals. If employee goals are not directly contributing to the team’s or the organization’s success, it should at least account for their personal development. If the goal is not even helping the employee improve professionally, then the goal shouldn’t exist in the first place.

Also Read: What To Look For In A 360 Feedback Software?

Keep Employee Goals Flexible

Ideally, you should be able to modify employee goals in the long run. Because, in the process of achieving a goal, the employee and manager might suddenly find that the objective of the goal needs to change. Or that they might need to add other objectives to the goal.

Make Employees Set Their Goals Themselves

Harvard Business Review, in their report, found that 14% of people who set their goals are 10 times more successful than their counterparts.

Last but not the least, this is one of the most important factors to consider when creating a goal. Does your goal match with what the employee has in mind? If it does, great, you can go ahead and set that goal. If it does not, you’ve got to find a way to meet in the middle with the employee. A goal that is set for an employee without an employee’s input is one that is doomed. If employees are not invested in a goal or even motivated by it, then they will not be able to pursue it.

Measure Their Overall Impact

This is one other thing you need to take into consideration. How does the goal you set for your employee affect you? Does it tie into any personal goals you have? And if it does, how do you measure the goal? How much is the employee contributing towards the goal? These are a few of the questions you should ask when creating goals for employees.

Goal Setting Module

Want to know how Engagedly can make your goal-setting process simpler? Request for a demo!

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Product Management OKRs : Examples

For holistically product-based companies, product managers and their product management team is the backbone of the organization. From Google to Microsoft to Amazon, every successful organization has talented product managers to provide the perfect solutions to their customer’s problems. They work with cross-functional teams and help everyone to be on the same page with what customers want. They are a part of a myriad of activities which include:

  • Understanding customer requirements and translating them for the development team 
  • Build and design product roadmaps 
  • Enhance existing feature of the product
  • Research on competitors

While it is not as easy as marketing or the sales team to set OKRs for those in product management, having OKRs help them stay focused and measure their success. In this article, we will share some sample OKRs for your product management team that will help you get started. But before we take a look at the OKRs let us take a look at its history and what are okrs.

Also Read: The Essential Guide To OKRs: Your Ultimate Tool To Setting Winning Goals

OKRs :  A Brief History

“OKRs have helped lead us to 10x growth, many times over.” – Larry Page, Co-founder of Google.

The concept of OKRs was first introduced by the former Intel CEO, Andy Grove, in the 1970s. But it was relatively unknown until it was introduced in Google in 1999 by John Doerr. Doerr was introduced to OKRs while working at Intel. To Google, it is a part of their culture, and they consider it a management methodology that helps them focus on the same issues throughout the organization. Organizations such as Amazon, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Netflix, Microsoft, Disney, Zynga, etc., credit OKRs for their success.

What Are OKRs?

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) comprise of: 

  • An Objective: It is a clearly defined goal to be achieved
  • 3-5 Key Results: Measurable steps to track the progress of the objectives

Each set of Objectives and their Key Results should answer two primary questions: ‘What is that we are planning to achieve?’ and ‘How to achieve it?’. 

Almost every organization globally uses the OKR methodology to set their goals because of its multitudinal benefits. Here are some of them: 

  • Short term and agile
  • Easy to align
  • Improves Transparency and Accountability
  • Time-Saving
  • Tracks progress and help prioritize tasks
  • Improves Team Collaboration

goal setting guide

How To Write Good Objectives?

  • Plain Language – Use a language that everyone understands, avoid using specific jargon and acronyms. The intention here is not to make things sound fancy. The right intention here is to convey the goals with clarity
  • Start With A Verb – Begin with a verb to describe the action and the desired direction. It helps in understanding a clear target to achieve and gives direction to the employee
  • Challenge the Status Quo – Objectives should be  set in such a way that it challenges your current way of working otherwise it would be ineffective to move your business forward
  • What’s Holding You Back? – Understand what problems are holding you back from moving forward and executing your strategy
  • Clarifying Questions – Use the Questioning method to move from abstracts to specifics of your OKRs. This will reduce confusion and help everyone understand the true objectives
  • Use Simple Rules – Use simple rules while drafting your OKRs. Have your own set of key criteria for objectives which are straightforward and simple to follow
  • Limited and Time Bound – Set no more than three objectives per quarter so that they remain impactful. Having too many objectives takes away focus from the priorities.
Also Read: Employee Engagement: Why Is It Important For Organizations?

How To Write Good Key Results?

  • Keep Them Simple And Clear – Make them simple and easy, so that they can be easily communicated understood by others
  • Assign Owner – Assign an owner who takes the responsibility of creating and achieving the key results and is responsible for updates on the progress
  • Use Positive Language – Use positive language while creating your key results as it will enhance motivation and increase commitment
  • Limit the Key Results – Set a minimum of three and maximum of five key results for every objective. Setting few will not be challenging, and setting too many will be difficult to achieve
Also Read: 360 Degree Feedback : 7 Tips To Get Started

With an insight into what is OKRs and how to write them, now let us take a look at some of the sample OKRs.

Objective 1: Research and Understand what users want

Key Results:

– Interview five Tier 1, ten Tier 2, and fifteen Tier 3 clients

– Sales Team or the Product Team interviews recent churned out customers

– Analyze Client Exit Surveys of past quarters

Objective 2: Deliver Version 2 of the project by the end of ______ (Time Frame)

Key Results: 

– Wireframe review and sign off on UI prototype

– Review and sign off on Mobile Responsive screens

– Ready for hand-off within the timeframe

Objective  3: Enhance features and improve usability

Key Results: 

– Identify and handover bugs to the development team

– Research on competitor’s products

– Connect with high level executive (clients and non-client)

Objective 4: Employee engagement and development of team members

Key Results:

– Each team members attends one training session each month

– Team members set their OKRs for each quarter

– Peer feedback is conducted half-yearly

– Two best performers from each quarter is rewarded

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How To Write Good Employee Goals and Objectives

Once you’ve decided you are going to set Objectives and Key Results (OKRS) for your employees or for yourself or even just for your team, you might find that you are stumped about what to do next.

Continue reading “How To Write Good Employee Goals and Objectives”