Employee Engagement For Dummies

Chapter 16

Goal! Setting Performance Goals and Conducting Performance Appraisals

In This Chapter

Establishing SMART performance goals

Retooling your performance appraisal process

Building succession into the performance appraisal process

Are goals important? In a word, yes. If you don't believe me, consider that a simple web search for the word goals, minus hits pertaining to soccer, yields nearly 700 million results.

We agree, then, that it's essential to set goals. (After all, if you aim at nothing, you'll hit every time!) What's also critical is to measure performance against said goals. In this way, you ensure that employees “know the score” on an organizational level (see Chapter 15), as well as individually. This chapter discusses the ins and outs of setting goals and outlines a new approach to performance appraisals — one that's meant to engage!

Get Smart: Establishing SMART Performance Goals

I once had a neighbor who was consistently the first guy on the block to get moving each Saturday. By 7 a.m., he'd be outside cleaning his garage, trimming the hedges, scraping the paint from his deck, or washing his car. And yet, by late afternoon, he still wasn't finished. There ...