Beyond providing a progress check for individual growth, performance reviews can serve as a framework for an employee’s contribution to top-level organizational goals. Taking time to discuss organizational goals and setting performance indicators aligned with those goals can help improve accountability, transparency, and motivation within your team.
Here are three tips for aligning employee performance reviews to company goals:
Set Specific SMART Goals That Connect to Company Objectives
SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. Following the SMART goals framework ensures everyone has clearly defined objectives and key results to work towards. Generic goals like “do excellent work” don’t provide the level of guidance needed to tie back to organizational aims. Every person’s goals should map directly to one or more high-level company goals using the SMART methodology.
Design Review Criteria Around Goal Achievement
The criteria you use to evaluate employee performance should tie directly to their established SMART goals. For example, if a sales representative has a goal to “close 25 new client deals in Q3 by attending industry networking events and following up diligently with prospective leads,” their review should include measurements the number of new deals closed and the specific activities undertaken to achieve that target, rather than vague indicators of work quality.
Have Regular Check-Ins on Goal Progress
Regularly meeting with your employees helps keep them informed and engaged, meeting once a year might make them feel a little blindsided when discussing their performance and goals. Weighing in the cadence for 1:1 meetings with the employee can prove beneficial. If the employee needs more guidance, consider meeting on a weekly basis, if not then perhaps monthly. Providing employees with regular feedback on goal progress allows you to course-correct issues before year-end. It also reinforces how employee activities connect to what the business is trying to achieve.
Aligning performance management to well-defined company goals is critical for driving results. For expert support in designing an effective performance review process tailored to your business, contact AlphaStaff’s HR pros today.