What is the level of comfort for employees to set realistic obtainable goals? The idea around goals for staff that are used to them is quite comfortable. For people like myself, when we were in the beginning stages of an employee, setting goals was quite uncomfortable because people were not used to setting them, keeping up to date with metrics and honestly the idea of goals just went away. Goals can be a very beneficial tool to use in business but if not monitored correctly, it can cause a lot of pain to employees and owners. Some of our recommended ways of keeping up to date with goals are;
- Keep them simple and direct
- Have a timeline associated with them
- Ensure you have a way to track them properly
- Have an agreement between staff and leadership of the goal
- Communicate more often than quarterly or yearly.
People are habitual creatures, so if you do not enforce the idea around goals and the importance of them, people will stop thinking and working on them.