Goal setting is a valuable way to help your staff stay motivated and perform well in their roles. Goals can help employers and employees find purpose in the everyday tasks they complete, as they join their fellow coworkers in achieving company goals. Learning how to set good goals can make a huge difference in the effectiveness of your team.
Motivation & Performance
Goals are a great way to motivate employees, as they provide a target to aim for and track. Software company Asana says, “Team members who know how their individual work contributes to broader company goals are 2X as motivated as their counterparts”. Goals help employees find purpose in their everyday tasks and visualize the impact they are having on the collected work of the company.
SMART Goals & OKRs
Now that you know why goal setting is important in business, check out some tips on how you can set solid and helpful goals for your business.
The SMART in SMART Goals stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. This is a great framework to follow in setting impactful goals in your work and personal achievements. SMART Goals ensure that the objective is clearly communicated, has a defined metric for success, is a reasonable expectation, and has a time constraint that will provide a sense of urgency to the team.
OKRs, coined by John Doerr, are Objectives and Key Results, and they are another helpful framework when looking to engage in impactful company goal setting. Simply follow the template: “I will [objective] as measured by [key result].” An example of this could be – I will increase our Instagram following as measured by posting once a day and doubling our following by the end of this quarter.
Tracking Goals
Be sure to find a consistent way to track the progress of your goals. Without tracking goals, they can easily be put on the back burner and forgotten. Try a planner that encourages goal setting, like a Panda Planner, or hang a whiteboard in the office to track goal progress as a team. Create regular goal check-ins for yourself and your team to get the most out of them.
This article was published in the Venango Chamber’s July 2023 VenangoWorks