What's the point?
When done well, goals and performance management should benefit the employee, the manager, and the company.
Clarity & Alignment of Employee Expectation
Employees can’t know how to achieve success if we aren’t clear on what is expected. Quantifying overarching expectations for the year sets clear guidance on how an employee spends their time without requiring micromanagement. It empowers an employee to make decisions in service of accomplishing the goals you set.
Company Strategic Alignment
Everyone can operate in the same direction with the same overarching focus. This doesn’t mean that everyone has the same exact goals (they couldn’t because not everyone has the same function or capability to drive the goals in the same way). But, when employees have an understanding of what the organization is trying to do , it allows them to make more informed decisions
Employee Success & Retention
Feedback is at the core of an employee doing well in their role, knowing to adjust when they need to, and feeling good about a job well done.
As well, when an employee's goals connect to overarching strategy, they feel more engaged to the company and are more likely to be retained.
These goals should also speak to their own growth and development—this is a way to highlight that their own professional growth also aligns with the growth of the company.
What's my role here?
Manager
Gives direction and drives conversation
Holds employees accountable for meeting objectives
Intakes strategy from their manager to build and share team objectives
Ensures employee's goals make sense within the goals of the team
Ensures that employee's goals connect to their specific development plan
Employee
Drafts individualized objectives and is committed to them
Held accountable for meeting the objectives they set
Intakes team strategy and creates goals to contribute to it
Voices individual development ambitions to manager to integrate into goals
This shouldn't be either a one-off or one-way interaction. It should be a conversation with some back and forth.
How to optimize performance
Goalsetting
If you are looking for employees to simply do as directed:
It should be manager-driven. You write the goals for them. If that’s the case, we can upload them directly into GoalSpan. The side-effect to this, though, is that ownership and accountability is not part of goal setting. For employees that you just expect to clock in, execute their responsibilities proficiently, and then clock out, this route makes sense. Note, though, that this model also requires more manager involvement throughout the year.
If you are looking for employees to take the goals on as their own, have some sense of accountability, and operate without as much direction:
It should be employee-driven. You have your team’s goals/your goals and present them to the team for them to write goals in service of those.
Example: Sam writes his goals for the Engineering organization and shares them with his team. Dorothy, who is his direct report, creates a set of goals for herself that align to the overarching goals of that organization. Because Dorothy wrote the goals herself, she is more inclined to drive towards them without Sam's direct intervention. She is empowered to make decisions based on the aligned goals. She feels connected to the goals and feels a personal investment. She understands how her goals connect to the company’s success, making her more engaged. She feels like they are helping her grow, as well, retaining her, too. Sam also benefits: having set clear expectations and goals to be accountable to, he is less likely to have to micromanage Dorothy.
1:1s and Check-ins
If the goals are crafted correctly, they should be something that can be checked in on regularly. For any 1:1s between employee and manager, you can utilize it as a continual outline, making comments and adjustments as needed.
It also can be well utilized in absence of a live 1:1 meeting. Thinking of it as an asynchronous communication tool: it’s a good method of tracking productivity and progress between employee/manager sets that are not co-located.
If employee/manager sets are using Goalspan for their 1:1s, comments can be checked and included in reviews. Naturally, it creates an easy bank of information for a manager to draw from, instead of having to go back and define elements from scratch.
Reviews
When the End of Year Look back Review Event is launched, you will fill out an assessment portion and the employee will have the option to fill out a Self-Review. If the employee fills out a self-review, it's helpful information to see how your and their assessments differ-- identifying ways your perspectives and expectations may differ.
Once you have completed the manager portion, you need to submit it for the second level manager for approval. Once its approved at the second level, You should set up time for a live conversation to go over it with your employee. You can download the PDF to do so or go through it on the platform (in-person or through video conference).
After this conversation has occurred, the employee will then sign that they received the feedback and will have the opportunity to add any comments.