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How to Develop Personal SMART Goals for Your Staff

Last Updated December 8, 2020

Group of employees working together in an office developing SMART goals by brainstorming and putting post it notes up on a glass.

For employees interested in advancing in their careers, it is sometimes difficult to know where to begin. Managers can help workers by setting goals, but if such goals are vague and unreachable, workers may end up more frustrated with their professional lives than they were initially.

What managers need is the ability to encourage workers to set the kind of goals that drive success, both for themselves and ultimately for the organization. Enter SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-Bound. They’re a way of thinking about goal setting that helps take employees out of the realm of vague generalities and into concrete steps.

Personal goals and business goals are handled differently in the SMART methodology. The focus here will be on personal goals – those that managers can help employees set to increase their competencies and promote career growth and advancement.

Regardless of how a worker defines his or her success, using SMART goals can help them achieve it.

Specific

To begin, managers must encourage workers to make their goals specific. This includes being career-oriented; it’s fine to want a large house or nice car, but as a goal it doesn’t really help anyone move forward in a tangible way. Instead, look for something that is both well-defined and related to their occupation: “I want to become proficient in Microsoft Access in six months” or “I want to be promoted to director after earning my degree.” A highly targeted goal is a good starting point with SMART.

Measurable

Second, be sure their goals are measurable. Moving toward a goal often requires concrete steps and clear indications of progress, so it pays for employees to make sure their goals can be readily assessed.

At the management level, goals tend to be business-oriented and easy to measure. A supply chain analyst could set a goal of reducing the time it takes for a customer order to be shipped by 10%, while a marketing manager might aim to create a radio ad that increases summer reservations by 5%. But personal SMART goals for workers are often less concrete, so a good strategy is to have them set small promotions and skill increases as goals. For example, a data entry specialist who wants to become a data analyst can have “learn SQL” and “create a workable, structured database” as measurable, intermediate steps.

Achievable

Next, consider whether their goals are achievable. This can be tricky, as managers do not want to discourage their workforce from setting high goals. Still, it is worth emphasizing that while distant objectives can be useful in motivating employees toward something big, they should have more short-term goals that can be achieved at their current experience level. Encourage workers to mostly set goals they are ready and able to pursue and have just a few that require long-term patience and dedication. For many employees, education is a solid goal from an achievability standpoint. Degrees and certificates are often important to advancement, and they can be chosen depending on what is appropriate for the employee’s current development.

Realistic

Additionally, it is important to ensure staff set goals that are realistic. Challenging is good, impossible is not. For example, if a materials planner just entering the supply chain industry sets an objective of being a supply chain analyst in three months, he or she may be disappointed. On the other hand, if the goal is to be a sourcing analyst in three months, he or she may well attain it and become motivated to pursue higher goals in the future. Help workers set targets that are both ambitious and realistic so that each achievement can drive them to seek another.

Time-Bound

Finally, SMART goals for employees must be time-bound. Long-term goals can have completion dates that shift around, but staff must develop short- and medium-term objectives that are clearly scheduled. Not only does this push them to succeed, but it also helps to move the goal from a vague desire to something with much better focus. “I want to earn my certificate in human resource management and get promoted to a manager position” is good, but “I want to earn my certificate in human resource management by May 1 and get promoted to a manager position by June 1” is much better.

Goals are crucial for advancement, so it pays to consider ways to make them as detailed as possible. By taking the time to develop personal SMART goals with their staff, managers can help chart clear paths forward within the organization and improve employee investment in the business.