Tag: goal setting software

10 Best Goal Setting Software in 2025 (Reviewed and tested)

“Setting employee goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible”. Tony Robbins.

Employee goal setting and tracking is one of the most crucial aspects of a business. It helps in keeping employees focused on their tasks and aligns individual goals with organizational goals.

To keep the workforce productive, organizations have started adopting employee goal-setting software to automate the cumbersome manual process of tracking every employee’s goals. These tools are loaded with advanced technology and offer numerous benefits to the organization such as higher productivity, transparency, and accountability.

In this article, we will discuss the features of some of the best employee goal-tracking software. It will help you in selecting a goal-setting tool that is aligned with the needs of your organization.

Here are 10 smart goal-setting software that you can use for setting and tracking employee goals!

  1. Engagedly
  2. Trakstar
  3. ClickUp
  4. Weekdone
  5. Asana
  6. Jira
  7. Lattice
  8. Confluence
  9. Namely
  10. Empxtrack

Engagedly 

Engagedly is an AI-powered comprehensive cloud platform that provides 360 degree Talent Management built for Employee Engagement. Unlike other goal management software, Engagedly is built for employees, improving engagement and building high-performance teams.

Engagedly Goal setting software

Set goals “on demand” for yourself or cascade to your directs. Clear goals and objectives are key to improving employee recognition and engagement. But that is only when employees know their organisational goals and how their contribution matters. Use Engagedly to lay out objectives and key results (OKR) with customisable check-ins and progress indicators.

Top Features:

– Goal setting

– INPACE goals

– OKRs

Pricing: $5,000 per year

Free Trial: Available

Trakstar

Trakstar goal setting

Trakstar lets its users measure the progress of their activities and goals, aligning productivity with company objectives. The app can be used by both employees as well as manager to add their own goals to appraisals.

This progress towards completing these goals can be measured by tracking “measurements”. These measurements mean progress can be seen in the percentage of completion and time to deadline. Further features include email reminders and note-leaving capabilities on appraisal documents.

Top Features:

– Manager and employee goals

– Track progress with measurements

– Note-taking and tracking

Pricing: Starting from $4370.00/year

Free Trial: Available

ClickUp

ClickUp is an all-in-one productivity app designed for all users—from solo entrepreneurs to large enterprises. Whether you use a traditional or agile project approach, it provides an intuitive experience that lets you manage your workload, monitor project updates, and collaborate with the team, all in one place.

ClickUp Goals Module

Known for its flexibility and feature-rich experience, ClickUp also offers a dynamic Goals feature to help you boost productivity on all fronts and track progress toward completion every step of the way.

Stay on track to hit your goals with clear timelines, measurable targets, and automatic progress tracking that’s connected directly to your tasks in ClickUp!

 

Assign multiple teammates to your Goals in ClickUp and manage them in organized folders to get everyone onboard with OKRs—even use folders to track sprint cycles, weekly employee scorecards, and any number of important team goals.

While the transparency of ClickUp Goals is a huge benefit for teams across industries, it also offers the option of assigning private Goals to yourself for tracking personal and professional growth.

Top Features:

  • Multiple ways to track progress toward goal targets
  • Organize goals with folders
  • Keep Sprints and backlogs on a timeline
  • Connect goals to your workflow
  • Easily manage permissions

Pricing: Paid plans starting at $5/user per month, billed annually.

Free Trial: Available

Weekdone

Weekdone lets managers quickly know what’s happening in their teams and give feedback to employees. It is a goal setting tool for both team leaders and employees, which brings transparency to team communication, a clear focus on goals and insightful feedback based on the person’s output data.

How-to-use-weekdone.com_

It uses objectives and key results to set and track goals. The biggest advantage of OKRs is that it can be used in big companies as well as in a team with a few people. It is said that if you would have to choose one management method, which would give the most benefits, it would be OKRs. Setting and tracking goals guarantees high performance and growth.

Top Features:

– Goal setting and tracking

– OKR Dashboard

– Hierarchical OKRs

– Company, department, team and individual goals

– JIRA and Asana task import

Pricing: $ 3,360 annually for 40 user package.

Free Trial: Available

Also Read: 10 Best employee feedback tools to track performance

Asana

Using Asana for strategic planning, goal setting and tracking helps keep your objectives top of mind and provides an easy way to communicate on your progress, so you know what’s progressing and how–whether you’re the CEO, a manager, or new intern.

Asana features-goals

You can view and organize projects, the way you like. You can sort projects in your portfolio in multiple ways: status, due date, custom field, project owner, alphabetically, and more.

To filter your portfolio view, click the filtering button in the top right corner of your Portfolio. Also, Asana is versatile in terms of analytics and connections to other platforms. For instance, you can export Asana to Excel as a portfolio and workspace backup or creation of live performance dashboards.

Top Features:

– Goal & milestone tracking

– Task prioritizing

– Completion tracking

Pricing: $24.99 per user, per month billed annually

Free Trial: Available

JIRA

Teams that need to be effective and efficient choose JIRA to help them capture, assign, and prioritize their work. Ensure that everyone on your team knows exactly what needs to be done when, then watch the job get done flawlessly.

JIRA OKR Goal

And when you add the power of agile to JIRA–with the JIRA Agile add-on–you can even plan agile sprints! Tasks, ideas, and requests are hiding in documents, people’s heads, and deep in your inbox.

Use JIRA to capture and organize your team’s issues, prioritize and take action on what’s important, and stay up to date with what’s going on around you. JIRA makes all of this easy, so your team can spend less time managing the work and more time building great software.

Top Features:

– Progress tracking

– Prioritizing

– Collaboration

-Task Management

Pricing: $20, per month

Free Trial: Available

Lattice

Lattice is a people management platform that has flexible features like OKRs, 360 performance reviews, feedback that contribute to organizational success.

Lattice goals

Top Features:

– Objectives and Key results

Pricing: $9, per month

Free Trial: Not available

Also Read: Why Do You Need A Real Time Performance Management Software

Confluence

Confluence makes it easy to organize and find the information you need. Group related pages together in a dedicated space for your work, your team, or cross-functional projects.

Depending on permissions, a space in Confluence can be made accessible to just you or the entire company. Page trees, which create a hierarchical list of pages within a space, highlight topics on parent pages and help keep work tidy.

Top Features:

– Collaborative Workspace

– Commenting

Pricing: $10.50, per month

Free Trial: Available

Namely

Namely enables companies to align individual performance goals with company goals and improve business performance. Managers can link goals to performance reviews and set weightings for each goal with custom, easy-to-use templates. Goal setting is now a standard feature in Namely’s comprehensive people management platform.

Top Features:

– Employee Goal Setting

– Employee Goal Alignment

Free Trial: Available

Empxtrack

Empxtrack Goal Setting and Tracking software ensure smooth cascading of goals to employees with periodic discussions and frequent performance check-ins. It gives a clear vision to each employee of what is to be done to reach closer to their individual and team goals.

Top Features:

– SMART Goals

– Performance Tracking

– Alignment Of Goals

Free Trial: Available

The one place for all your projects and team collaboration.

Smart goal-setting software lets managers and leaders have quick access to the organization’s performance and goal achievement dashboards. The insights offered by the goal-setting software help in getting detailed information about individuals’, teams’, and departmental performance and take actions accordingly.

Goal settings and OKRs

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What is employee goal setting and why is it important for businesses?

Employee goal setting is a process of establishing specific and measurable goals for individual employees that align with the overall goals of the organization. It is important because it helps employees understand what is expected of them, improves performance, and increases employee engagement.

Q2. What are some key features to look for in an employee goal-setting tool?

When choosing an employee goal-setting tool, it is important to consider features such as goal tracking, progress monitoring, performance analysis, feedback mechanisms, and goal alignment with company objectives. The tool should be easy to use, customizable, and provide clear insights into employee performance and progress.

Q3. How can employee goal setting improve my organization’s bottom line?

Employee goal setting can improve your organization’s bottom line in several ways. When employees have clear goals and expectations, they are more motivated and engaged, leading to increased productivity and better performance. This can result in improved customer satisfaction, higher revenues, and lower turnover rates, ultimately contributing to increased profitability.

Q4. How can I implement employee goal-setting in my organization?

To implement employee goal setting in your organization, start by defining your business objectives and identifying the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you achieve them. Then, work with individual employees to set specific, measurable goals that align with these KPIs. Provide regular feedback and support to help employees achieve their goals, and use an employee goal-setting tool to streamline the process and track progress over time.

Benefits of A Goal Setting Software

In the workplace, goals are crucial for success. Goals keep you on the course during rough times and help you stay focused on issues that matter. Goals provide employers the benefits of helping employees stay on course, aligning employee goals with organizational goals, etc. The very process of goal-setting can be further enhanced by using goal-setting software for your business needs.

Continue reading “Benefits of A Goal Setting Software”

10 Reasons to Use Goal Setting Software

Setting goals is a crucial task any organization should take with great importance. It gives the management and employees a sense of purpose and direction. Imagine running a race without knowing where the finish line is. How meaningless it would seem to most people – putting in the effort of working every day without an end goal. And because we would like to avoid such a situation, we have to set goals. Goal setting has its many pecks, and that’s where goal setting software comes into play. Goal-setting software helps you plan, manage, and track your goal, ensuring you are working with a sense of direction.

The goal setting software can assist any business with a goal-setting strategy, and in this article, we will discuss ten reasons you should use a goal-setting application.

Provides Clarity and Transparency

Goal setting provides clarity to management and employees of an organization. And using goal-setting software helps you to achieve this. A study by Inc. showed that 70% of companies ranked “communicating business goals” as an effective way to have high-performing staff members. 

Another study by Gallup shows that employees whose managers engage them in the goal-setting process perform 3.6 times better than their counterparts in the dark. Meaning employees show better engagement when they understand why they should achieve their goals.

Transparency means that everyone within the organization knows the goals, why the company sets those goals and their part in achieving them. Transparency allows for inclusion, which helps with the business direction. Clarity and transparency are at your fingertips if you use the target-setting software. Employees can access the breakdown of the company objectives into goals and where they come in.

Helps Employees See the Bigger Picture

The first reason ties into this point. Staff members who see themselves as part of the bigger picture are likely to work harder towards achieving their goals. They do this because they see how their contribution affects the overall organizational goals.

According to an article in Harvard Business Review, employees should see how their goals fit into the larger organizational goals to get the best from them. Their Interaction with the goal-setting software can aid this process.

The best goal setting software in the market has the features to help achieve this. 

Also Read: 5 Most Common OKR Myths Busted

Helps to Automate and Track Progress

In recent years, automation has become something of a buzzword. It’s a term often thrown about, and the surrounding hype is something to be envied. The truth is, there is a good reason for this hype.

Various studies like this have shown us proof of the buzz – a primary reason being an increase in productivity and reduced costs.

Automating activities like tracking, managing, and scoring makes it easier to attend to other essential activities. Artificial intelligence will carry out the repetitive process for you. Doing this makes it easier to carry out goal-setting strategies.

The goals can be customized for each employee and easily tracked from the platform by the manager in charge. The automation allows for tracking and feedback to be seamless. 

Keeps Employees Accountable

Staying accountable is one of the hardest and overlooked activities in a company. It’s easier to give end-of-year feedback to an employee than to monitor and track the employee’s progress. According to The American Society of Training and Development, you are 65% more likely to achieve your goal if you have someone tracking your progress.

A goal-setting software presents you with the platform to achieve this goal. 

Being accountable can bring out the best in an employee, and the best goal setting software in the market can help you achieve such.

It Becomes Easier to Manage a Team

Managing a team of people can be a tough task, and it isn’t unusual for team leaders to lose sight of the progress reports of team members because of other pressing matters. One of the many factors that ensures a company achieves its organizational goals is teamwork. When you and your team have a common goal in mind, it helps unify team members to meet the set targets.

A unit or department sets a target and then breaks them down into individual targets for each person. Each member then tracks their goals as individuals and as a collective. Since each member has access to the team’s overall goal with goal-setting software, they can keep each other in check.

A reliable goal-setting software ensures individuals can view the departmental goals. They also help individuals see how they contribute to the overall departmental goal. When departmental goals are readily accessible by team members, it helps them stay focused.

Also Read: 6 Traits of High-Performing Teams

Provide a Platform for Feedback

Getting feedback from your manager is an important task. Unfortunately, this task only occurs once in a blue moon and often performance reviews take place at the end of the year. A study by Officevibe revealed 4 out of 10 workers feel disengaged when they get no feedback. They are also two times likely to feel detached from the organization.

It gets more interesting as the study also shows only 58% of managers believe they give adequate feedback to their employees. This information provides us with some fascinating but understandable statistics. Another interesting finding in this study was 65% of participants said they wanted more feedback. 

Among employees that receive feedback weekly, 43% of them engage well with the business objectives. On the other hand, only 18% of people stay engaged without weekly feedback. 

Feedback also presents a way to improve and see things from other people’s perspectives. Peer-to-peer feedback can also help to de-escalate tensions between members of an organization. To gain an efficient feedback framework – it’s best to use an application that can provide a brilliant platform. The best goal setting software on the market has a feedback column where team members and other added members can give constructive feedback.

Goal Setting Recognition Tools Can Help Improve Employee Morale

In any modern office, recognizing the efforts of employees of any organization is necessary. A study by Gallup shows that the number one reason employees leave their jobs is because the company does not recognize their efforts. 

 Another study by SHRM also shows employee recognition helps to reduce frustration in the workplace by 28.6%. Both studies highlight how effective recognizing employees’ achievements are – especially in recent times where workers need more than good pay to stay in a job. The pandemic has seen employees reflect on their career goals and have seen many people opt to resign. 

 Recognizing and rewarding the efforts of employees is more significant than ever. And using the goal-setting software is a brilliant way to monitor and reward meeting goals and objectives – boosting the employees’ morale.

 Recognition can be as simple as using the software to publish the goals met to fellow peers. A goal-setting software can aid you by helping build a culture of rewarding and recognizing the best talents in your company. 

Improves Communication within the Organisation

A survey of 400 companies by Inc. found companies lose up to 37 billion per year because of poor communication. We cannot overemphasize the importance of good communication, as it is crucial to achieving the goals of an organization.

Efficient communication helps the management convey the organization’s vision to the staff members. It allows for feedback from employees and helps improve productivity. The advantages of having efficient communication are many, but some key ones include:

  • Improves the workplace atmosphere.
  • Reduces the amount of misinformation and confusion.
  • Helps to increase the commitment of the employees.

Acknowledging how vital good communication is, is not enough to align employees with the organizational goals. That is why gaining and using goal-setting software is an admirable first step you can take. The importance of the goal-setting application is in the number of communicating features it possesses. The best products in the markets have features to promote communication between employees and management. 

Also Read: Be A Better Manager And Avoid These 5 Mistakes

It Promotes Collaboration

The importance of goal setting means collaboration between departments is a powerful aspect for achieving organizational goals. No department is an island because it takes the effort of all to achieve the different targets the business has set out to do. For the departments to work well together, there are tools the company will need to function effectively, and one of them is a goal-setting tool.

One thing this tool brings to the forefront is its visibility. All employees can track the set goals and their progression, allowing for ease in cross-team collaboration. Working cross-team to solve a common company problem is a task that is doable with such software.

Another use for goal setting is it aids when working remotely or at home. It’s easy to keep up with your department worksheet and other departments if both departments are on a project. The best goal-setting apps in the market have features that help monitor the progress of other team members.

Flexible Goal Formatting for Different Departments

Different departments need different metrics in order to give a fair assessment. Good target-setting software is flexible enough to accommodate different goal formats. Some examples of goals and their tracking formats include:

  • “Hit $15m in the first quarter.” – We can track the goal in dollars.
  • “Increase sales of product X by 5%.”- the goal’s format is in percentage.
  • “Visit the company’s 10 new sites for inspection.” – This goal is measured in numbers.
  • “Send out a performance survey on Friday.” – This is a simple binary type goal. It requires a “done” or “not done” kind of goal format.

The best application out there has the flexibility to format and track different goals as the need presents itself. 

In conclusion, goal-setting software will be a big plus for your business. It can help you take your business to a whole new level where direction, accountability, and clarity become the norm.

Goal settings and OKRs

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

schedule demo with okr expert

10 Things To Look For In A Goal Setting Software

Goal setting software can help an organization manage goals and track them across the board.  But if you are looking for a goal-setting software, other than creating and tracking goals, what else should the software accomplish? And more importantly, how can it become a valuable addition to your organization’s workflow?

Continue reading “10 Things To Look For In A Goal Setting Software”

7 Steps To Setting Workplace Goals And Making Them Happen! [Infographic]

The first step to achieving success is setting effective goals; the next is creating a plan to achieve these goals. How do you create effective workplace goals that drive you to accomplish them? Continue reading “7 Steps To Setting Workplace Goals And Making Them Happen! [Infographic]”

Why Engagedly Is The Ultimate Goal-Setting Software That You Need!

“Goals are very important!” Well, don’t we all know that already? But achieving those goals is more important than just setting them. To achieve goals, we need to keep track of our progress and plan a strategy.

Continue reading “Why Engagedly Is The Ultimate Goal-Setting Software That You Need!”