What's Your Goal?

Happy new year everyone. Well, we are back(most of us) to the workplace, and as usual the beginning of a new year is bringing us all thoughts of what we can do better/differently for the coming year.

Most of us are sat making resolutions that we probably won't keep, and also in the work place if (like us) you are in a fairly driven and targetted environment, you are setting objectives and milestones for others to reach over the next months and year.

A lot of people we work with end up messing up the whole idea of objectives. In some cases actually, they manage to make them something that people loath, and worry about, rather than honour the reason we in HR usually harp on about them. Here are some Do's and Don't's

DO - Include your team in their objectives. Make sure they are in line with the business objectives of course, but engagement starts with individuals believing in and understanding why they are important, and valued. Guide by all means, but make sure they have input.

DO - Allow people to me imaginative, hopeful, optimistic, but of course, dont allow them to set a 'pie in the sky', unachievable objective.

DONT - Allow you or those around you to be stifled by 'SMART' - not everything inspirational can be (or should be) measureable, not everything that allows us to think out of the box and imaginatively can be specific. I understand the use of SMART, but just make sure you don't live by it.

DO - Make sure you set time aside to measure the success (or failure) of how the objectives are doing.

DO - Reward success. DONT - reward with how you want to be rewarded - Bottles of champers, nights out, meals out etc, aren't everyones bag nowadays. We have tonnes of ideas on a successful reward and bonus scheme.