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

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.
Get Engagedly.

How to Implement SMART Employee Goal Setting in Your Company

What’s the difference between having New Year’s resolutions and a list of goals for your business? The so-called resolutions are wishes, while the latter has a design and specific structure. At least, that’s how it should be. 

Successful business owners use the SMART strategy to draw a battle plan for the year ahead. They know where they want to go and how to get there in the period of time at their disposal. Otherwise, you risk working hard for a year (or more) and have nothing to show for it at the end. 

However, just because managers and business owners are aware of this practice, it doesn’t mean everyone in the company knows how to use goal setting to their advantage. Yet, when done right, it can help improve employee engagement and can drive up performance and productivity. 

Also read: 7 Reason Why Goal Setting Is Important

Setting and meeting goals is quite challenging, but it gets easier when you have all the right tools and in-depth knowledge of how things work. That’s why, in today’s article, we are going to have a look at the meaning behind SMART goals and talk about the most important steps to take when setting employee goals.

What are S.M.A.R.T. Goals?

Goals defined by this method are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound (SMART, in short). The strategy was developed as a management concept and the clever naming made it extremely popular all over the world. 

But what exactly does it mean? 

Even when you know each letter’s meaning, it can still be difficult to fully grasp the power of this strategy. Here are a few pointers:

  • Specific: Your goals need to be specific and focus on an area for improvement that can be easily defined
  • Measurable: It’s important to have an indicator of progress to give you an idea of how things are evolving. 
  • Achievable: The goal has to be achievable using the resources at your disposal. Also, you have to name those resources and understand how you’ll use them. 
  • Realistic: What results do you expect after the goal is achieved and are they realistic given your current situation?
  • Time-related: Your goal needs a specific time frame, with well-timed intervals, in order to see its progression in time. 

Pixabay

How to Implement SMART Employee Goal Setting

#1: Involve Your Team

When setting employee goals, you need to consider the way they can improve. That’s why it makes complete sense to include them in the goal-setting process. 

Be open about the company’s growth strategy and talk to your team about what’s in store for them. What type of projects they should expect, what type of resources will be at their disposal, and the timeframe for it all. 

When developing your SMART goals, ask for their opinion on the elements that affect them directly. For instance, if a developer tells you the timeframe for Project X is too tight, ask for more details. Learn why they think this way and create these goals together. 

Doing so inspires a sense of commitment and community within the team. Coincidentally, according to JobSage, goal transparency and collaboration in setting them should be part of the core company values.

Also read: Setting Team Goals? Then This Is The Checklist You Need Now!

#2: Connect Individual Goals with Business Objectives

Do you know your employee’s individual goals for development? In some organizations, employees are handed the goals (or targets, if you want) at the start of the reporting period. In such cases, there isn’t much employee involvement in developing these goals. More importantly, there’s no connection between the view of the company and that of the employees.  

On the other side, when employees’ individual goals are part of the goal-setting process, it results in performance improvement. In recent years, we see more and more organizations create team-performance goals that are connected to functional business objectives in order to allow individuals to grasp the impact of their own actions within the company. 

So how do you do that? 

It all starts with knowing the individual goals of your team members. As the manager, you should know who wants more flexibility in their schedule, who wants more freedom when it comes to execution, and who would like to climb the ladder. Once you have the data, it’s easier to find common ground between business objectives and employees’ individual goals. 

#3: Create Flexible Goals

In the world of business, nothing is absolute; everything needs to be adjusted in order to make sure the goals, actions, and overall company direction correspond with the real world. Otherwise, there’s no reason to spend hours on end planning your battle plan!

Therefore, in order to stay relevant, goals must be adjustable on the go without changing the meaning (unless it’s necessary). 

Here is a hypothetical situation when a goal may need adjusting. 

A company plans to increase its brand’s social media presence by the end of the first trimester of 2022, using Facebook as the main channel. They want 20% more followers and a 10% better engagement rate. However, if Facebook drops in popularity and most of its target audience avoids it, there’s no need to continue with this channel.  

In this situation, the company would find the next most popular channel and adapt their goal’s targets accordingly. They will continue to use the same marketing team and most of the planned resources, but there will be some adjustments in the grand scheme of things. 

Also read: Top 10 Performance Management Software To Use In 2022

The same can happen with your team members. Their goals may change as time goes by and sometimes, you’ll find that what used to be relevant at the start of the reporting period no longer makes sense. That’s OK, as long as you can adjust the goals and keep going.

Wrap Up

Many employees dread the annual performance review (even the ones who know they’ve been good during the year). This happens because the organization doesn’t leave room for growth and learning when things don’t go as planned.

In most cases, a failure to achieve goals says a lot more about the goal-setting process than it does about the ones executing them. So managers and business owners should use the performance review as a learning opportunity. It’s also a way to see what works and what doesn’t work within your organization, since each business environment is unique.


Want to know how Engagedly can help you set SMART goals? Request a demo from our experts. 

Request A Demo


Guest blog contribution by Enrique Garcia

Enrique Garcia Guest Blogger Engagedly

Enrique is responsible for managing partnerships between reputable brands worldwide for BrandMatcher.io. He is agile in finding opportunities where others would recognize them as non-existent and has an instinct to differentiate between what works from what doesn’t. The perfect duo since it combines two things he loves best about the digital spectrum – writing & growth!

How Can Setting Employee Goals Help Your Organization?

When we think of employee goals, we think of how much guidance and direction they offer to employees. But rarely do we think of how setting goals for employees can impact an organization. In fact, we sometimes forget that goal-setting even benefits organizations in the grand scheme of things.

Continue reading “How Can Setting Employee Goals Help Your Organization?”