Of course, employees want to know how they are doing. As
we mentioned earlier regarding the organization and the manag-
er, clear performance goals help employees to monitor their
efforts and assess their results during the year and provide a basis
for performance appraisals and reviews. The goals can also serve
as a basis for ongoing discussion between manager and employ-
ee or, for that matter, among employees, aimed at improving work
contributions. Employees can receive recognition for accomplish-
ments throughout the year, since it’s easy to identify when an
employee has met or exceeded a performance goal.
The bottom line here is that performance goals help
employees know where they need to go and what they need to
do to get there and help them determine how they are doing.
Where Do Performance Goals Come From?
Performance goals don’t appear out of the blue and they aren’t
created from nothing. Where do they come from?
Since performance goals are used to coordinate and aim
employees so they can contribute to the overall performance of
the organizations, they need to link to the goals of the organiza-
tion. Performance goals can’t result in better performance unless
they are derived from the goals and priorities of the work unit
and the company. We recommend that performance goals be
based upon the needs of the organization. That’s where they
must originate to be most effective. (In the next chapter, we’ll
map out the sequence that links individual goals to organiza-
tional goals.)
It’s not uncommon for managers to pull or generate per-
formance goals from job descriptions. That’s not a good idea.
Job descriptions are notorious for being out of date and far8Perfect Phrases for Setting Performance Goals