understand how their individual work contributes to the over-
all goals of the organization, we enable them to make their
own decisions about how to spend their work time so that their
work is consistent with the priorities of the organization. The
result? The employees know what they must do, how well they
must do it, and why they are doing it. That means there’s much
less need for ongoing supervision. Also, clear performance
goals allow managers to empower their staff to make decisions
relevant to their work without having to consult the manager
on every little question.
Second, clear goals allow employees to monitor their own
progress all year ’round and correct their efforts as necessary. If
employees know what they need to accomplish, they can look at
their results as they go and identify barriers to achieving those
goals. Once again, this ability to self-monitor and self-correct
means less managerial time is needed to supervise and guide
employees.
Third, the performance appraisal/review becomes much eas-
ier, causes far less anxiety, and goes much faster when there are
clear performance goals. In fact, the better the performance
goals, the clearer they are and the more measurable they are, the
less managers and employees have to venture into the realm of
vague opinions about performance during the appraisal
process. Combine this with the fact that performance goals allow
employees to monitor their efforts and the results throughout
the year and we get an appraisal process that is much more
effective and yields no surprises for the employee.
Finally, let’s consider the value of performance goals in help-
ing to proactively identify barriers to performance. It does little
good to identify poor performance after the fact or after it has
6
Perfect Phrases for Setting Performance Goals