If your soccer team cannot see the goal post, and players don’t know what steps they need to take to score a point (can I use my hands?), you can’t expect to win many games. You can always hope the other team is more clueless.
Yet most managers (even at large employers) do not let employees know their expectations for performance or what results or goals are required for the individual to contribute to department and organizational success.
In fact, Towers Watson 2014 Talent Management and Rewards Study found that “Only half of the organizations participating in the say managers are effective at working with employees to set appropriate performance goals for individual performance.”
I have read other research that asked managers and employees to name the top 3 priorities in a job, and they agreed on only ONE! So most employees focus on two main results areas that are not the highest priority.
Basically, employees want to know what does a doing “good job” look like and how I will be measured– but they are usually left guessing.
And who is responsible? The manager….
The solution (simple to say, serious effort to do):
- Get crystal clear on the activities, results and key performance indicators for each job
- Share with employees and gain their understanding and agreement
- Track, monitor, share results with employee
- Coach performance (and process) improvements with each employee weekly, monthly, quarterly
Then you will often hear (to quote our retired Buffalo Sabres hockey commentator Rick Jeanneret), “he shoots – he scores!!!!”
Article- Employees get their purpose with cascading goals /a>
Learn more about how Expectations, goals and KPI dashboards work as part of your People Plan:
Clarifying Expectations section of our free resources
Image courtesy of Ohmega1982 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
