What you should know about Performance setting

Each month, we are building a step-by-step guide on how to manage employee performance to help drive business success.

In last month’s article we considered how to translate goals established by your business leader (CEO, Managing Director or Business Owner) into your department objectives. This month we address the translation of team objectives to personal ones. 

We already covered the importance of ensuring SMART objectives, and shared an example of how to link these to company targets.

As we now translate these objectives to individual targets for your staff or team members it is important to remember that they must cascade through the organisation.  If you are a Senior Manager who sets goals for other managers, consider that these need to be translated into individual objectives later on.

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To start with, reflect on the Department goals you set, and hopefully agreed, with your line manager. Next, consider your team and what each person does. Map out which of the team objectives they can impact, as shown below.

Now, for each member of your team, create a simple table so that you can translate team goals into their goals. To ensure consistency you may want some members of the team to have similar or consistent targets. When writing these down remember to define them as SMART goals.

You will need to sit with each team member individually to discuss and agree their personal objectives. It is important to think about your communication and explain how these were defined from:

Company Goals >>> Department Goals >>> Your Goals

In preparation for the meeting, consider the skill sets of your team and decide if any of them need extra training or enhanced skills to achieve these goals. If so, please discuss this openly and honestly with them and agree how to help enhance their skill set with training, coaching or mentoring.

SMART objectives are measurable and it is important that you have regular reviews with your team to ensure they are on track to meet their goals. Depending on the goals and measures your organisation has in place these meetings could take place monthly but should be at least quarterly. 

When the targets are agreed ensure they are confirmed in writing and book your review dates over the coming year. If personal development is required for a team member, agree a timeline and budget to complete this.

Note:

See first in Series: How to Move from "Business Strategy" to "People Strategy"

Next month we will address mentoring and tracking these objectives.