 Setting employee goals are at the heart of successful performance management. Goals align the efforts of everyone in the business, helping the company drive success, which then in turn helps everyone. Having clear realistic goals provides direction for employees, helps motivate employees, and improves the overall level of performance. And goals should be used for evaluation as well. I'm taking you through eight actions to help set employee goals that get results. These are. Go through each of these eight actions and you'll have goals that are clear and realistic and drive employee ownership. Make sure your employee goal setting drives results, not more paperwork. My name is Jess Coles and I've had a 25 year management career in corporates and household names through to SMEs. Employee goal setting is such a critical management tool so it absolutely makes sense to do the best job you can setting goals and practically using the goals set to drive performance. And if you're new to this channel enhance.training shares business and people management expertise to help you improve your performance and that of your team and business. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. The first action to set employee goals is to align employee goals to the team and company goals. Alignment is very important to get everyone working in a similar direction. The most successful companies work very hard to get everyone aligned so each team member's efforts support and accelerates the company's progress and performance. You want your team to progress and perform. You also want your team to support all the other teams in the company to help drive the company's performance. Goals are best set at the highest level and then work downwards to the individual employee. At every stage the goals from the smaller group should directly align into the goals of the bigger group i.e. employee goals align into the team goals and team goals align into the functional goals and so on. The goals you set will drive behaviour. Choose your goals as carefully as possible so you limit unintended consequences. Make sure you keep each employee's goal carefully aligned to the team and company goals. The second action to set employee goals is to ask employees to set their goals. You are asking your employees to be involved in setting their goals so they have ownership of the goals set. Imposing goals set by you will not drive ownership of those goals. If your employees feel that they have set their goals or substantially inputted into their goals the research has shown that the goals set are much more likely to be reached. Get your employees involved in setting their goals. I found the following steps useful in giving the employees a framework within which to set their goals. Firstly, outline the team goals that need to be reached. Secondly, ask the employee what role specific goals they should set themselves so that we can meet the team goals. Third, then coach them towards setting goals that align with the needs of the team. With the high performance in your team, follow the same steps but give them more space to work out how they're going to support reaching the team goals. Make sure consistent goals are set for employees with similar responsibilities. If the goal alignment is good, this should happen naturally. Keep the level of the goals similar to ensure fairness. Ask the employees to be fully involved in setting their goals within the framework that you set. The third action to set employee goals is to make the goals smart. Smart stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time specific. Making the goals smart makes them fair and clear for the employee and for you and for the business. So let's cover each element very quickly. Specific goals are clearly defined rather than general. For example, increasing gross profit by £50,000 in the next 12 months by winning at least 10 new customers is a specific goal. Measurable, a measurable goal must have numbers assigned to it against which you can measure progress. Achievable, make sure the goal is achievable with the resources sensibly available. Don't make it easy nor too hard. Set the level of the goal while considering the individual's ability and the resources available to deliver against that goal. Relevant, the goals must be largely within the person's control or significant influence and must relate to their areas of responsibility. Time specific, always include a clear timeframe or a date for the goal to be reached. You can also add on extending and rewarding to get smarter goals. Extending, setting levels of achievement like bronze, silver and gold rather than a pass or fail is generally more motivating and can drive over performance. Rewarding, make achieving the goals set valuable to the employee. Just remember not everyone is strongly motivated by money. Ask the employee what would be meaningful to them. So in setting goals for employees make sure they are smart or smarter goals. The fourth action to set employee goals is to plan how to measure progress. I don't believe there is much point in setting smart goals without working out how you're going to measure progress against those goals. If you can't measure progress then how will you know or the employee know how they are doing in reaching the goals set? How will you both know when that goal has actually been reached? Try to make sure the method of measurement is as simple and straightforward as possible. Even better is to have a third party calculating progress, such as the finance team as it reduces arguments and makes the measurement fairer. So define how the goals are going to be measured carefully when you are in the process of setting each employee's goals. The fifth action to set employee goals is to build the plan of how to achieve the goals. Setting employee goals is significantly easier than coming up with realistic plans of how to achieve the employee goals set. Planning the how makes achieving the goals a lot more likely. You can firstly leave the planning to the individual, secondly get involved in coaching the individual to build a plan to achieve their goals, thirdly get the team or others involved in building plans for each employee's goals. In practice how to achieve some goals are fairly straightforward. They may be an extension of what the employee does day in and day out. Other goals might be out of the employee's comfort zone or experience the dates or require a team effort to achieve. Using many minds to solve problems nearly always beats one mind, no matter how individually brilliant. Decide the most appropriate course of action or combination of actions to get plans in place to achieve each of the employee goals set. Getting plans in place massively increases the chance of achieving those goals. Ensure each person or team has a plan to achieve the goals set. A plan takes some of the pressure off the individual and gives everyone a set of milestones to measure progress. Some team members will underperform the plan set out for reasons in or outside of their control. A plan gives you an early warning of underperformance and allows you, others or the full team to help get that plan back on track. Doing your best to make sure each individual smashes the goals is absolutely in your interests. If each individual beats their goals the team will do too and hopefully the company too. Creating plans of how to achieve each goal helps everyone beat their goals. The sixth action to set employee goals is to use carrots and sticks. Carrots work better for some people, sticks with others. Take the time to set out the consequences for the employee of beating the goals set and of significantly missing those goals. Carrots or rewards are of course much nicer to use and are generally more productive to use in my view. Money is only one type of reward. Think of all the other types of rewards that you could offer. Your first year recognition, praise both public and private, prizes, peer recognition and so on. Secondly, development opportunities. You know involvement in high profile projects, different responsibilities, training courses, whatever is available in your business. Third promotion is more powerful than money as you are getting a lot of other benefits as well as a higher salary. Fourth, more holiday. This is more valuable to many than a bonus. Fifth, fun activities or trips. You know the manager cooking a barbecue for the staff or team trips or holidays in the company, etc. One of the best approaches is to actually ask the individual or team what they would view as a significant reward for achieving the goals set. Consider setting different levels rather than using only one level of goal. When individuals or teams are struggling to achieve their goals, work out how you are going to support them best. The quicker you can start to effectively help the struggling employee, the quicker you can get to achieving the goal back on track. And using personal improvement plans or more formal approaches may be necessary with employees with poor attitudes or those that are lazy or difficult. Spell out the consequences for not making the effort to improve. Whether the employees are doing brilliantly or poorly, work out how you are going to support employees and keep as close as you need to to the activities and projects being undertaken. The seventh action to set employee's goals is to keep the main thing the main thing. You know how many people get distracted by the latest project, event or shiny objects. I've seen it happen far too many times and the goals are not achieved as a result. Part of your job as a manager is to keep the team and individual employees focused on their goals and to keep the main thing the main thing. Don't allow them to get sidetracked or allow something urgent but not as important to take up too much of their time. Bring up the employee's goals in your one-to-one meetings and go through them. Put the main goals up on a whiteboard and track progress against them in full view of the team. Do what you need to to keep the team focused on their key goals. A few other points. Don't give your employee a long list of goals. Many goals means they are focused on no goals. Keep the list of goals short save to a max of five significant goals in a year. Another very useful approach is to set a key goal each 90 days. Then work to achieving that one goal before moving on to the next goal. This way each person or team delivers well on four key goals each year. If you try to achieve all four goals at the same time there is less chance that all four be delivered as well. So keep the main thing the main thing. The eighth action to set employee goals is to recognise change is constant so expect to adapt. Change is constant in business because the business environment is constantly changing. Competitors keep adapting and the business priorities will keep changing as a result. Accept that goal set at the beginning of the year may become out of date, superseded or irrelevant. Plan to constantly check in on the goal set and be prepared to adapt or replace goals. How often you do this really depends on the growth rate in your business or the rate of change within your business. The quicker the growth rate the more frequently you should re-evaluate goals set at all levels. For most businesses with modest rates of growth re-evaluating your goals every quarter works pretty well. This balances the work needed to actually reassess the goals against the value gained from changing the goals. Adapt your goals to keep full alignment and relevance across all the goals in the business from business strategy down to individual employee goals. Plan to adapt the goals set as you progress through each year. So there you have eight actions to set employee goals that get results. Do everything you can to help each employee achieve their goals set because this helps you and helps the company. As a quick reminder, the eight actions are firstly align employee goals to the team and company goals second ask employees to set their goals third make the goals smart fourth plan how to measure progress fifth build the plan of how to achieve the goals sixth use carrots and sticks seventh keep the main thing the main thing and eight changes constant so expect to adapt. If you have any questions please leave them in the comment section below and I'll get back to you. Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to seeing you again soon.