As the end of the year approaches, it is time to start setting new business goals and professional development goals for your team. But before heading into planning mode, it is important to assess and evaluate your year-end goals.
This will allow you to know where you are starting from and where there is room for improvement and growth.
So, how exactly can you go about assessing and evaluating your end-of-year goals?
Why Goal Setting Matters
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It doesn’t always make sense to assess goals at the end of the year. The right time of year depends a lot on the business you are in and its cycles. Your “year-end” does not need to be at the end of the calendar year.
But setting your year-end goals and evaluating them matters. Why?
- Having clear goals helps you focus effort and resources more effectively.
- They ensure that everyone is on the same page in terms of what needs to be done.
- Keeping goals in focus increases the likelihood that you will achieve your desired results.
- You can challenge and stretch people in a positive way.
Set SMART Goals
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Evaluating year-end performance begins earlier in the year when setting goals. Most women are now familiar with the idea that goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-limited.
When setting your goals, you should also be establishing how and when they will be evaluated, and what data will be collected to allow for that evaluation.
To be measurable gaols generally need to be of the following type:
- To increase something, such as profits, engagement, or support
- To provide something, such as a specific service or product
- To improve something, for example, efficiency, team cohesion, or public perception
- To decrease something, such as losses, inefficiencies, or staff turnover
- To save something, such as time or resources
With goals set, you should put processes in place to gather data throughout the year that can feed into evaluations.
SEE ALSO: How Self-Doubt Can Sabotage Your Career
Evaluating Your Year-End Goals
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There are lots of different want to evaluate year-end goals, but the process should generally look something like the following.
1. Revisit Your Goals
The first thing to do is revisit goals and make sure that everyone is clear on what the goals were.
2. Gather Data
This is a varied process. You might be gathering hard data that you have been collecting over the year, such as financial reports or web analytics, or you might be collecting more intangible data. This could be self-assessments done by staff members, where they are asked to list the things that they think that they have done to contribute to specific goals. It can be useful to get a team together to “brain dump” at this stage, as well as review things such as minutes from meetings.
3. Measure Results
It is then time to bring together the data and the goals and assign numbers of values to goals. This may be specific, such as sales increased by 10%. This can also be a more subjective process. For example, both a team member and their manager can agree that the team member made a noticeable improvement in their goal of contributing more in group meetings.
You may wish to score different areas, for example with ratings such as (5) exceeded expectation, (4) successful, (3) acceptable, (2) room for improvement, and (1) requires attention.
4. Set New Goals
The end of a goal evaluation process should always be to set new goals. Some of these will be influenced by performance in the previous year, while others may be new aspirations to realize over the next period.
SEE ALSO: Resolutions vs Goals And The Race To Results
Personal Evaluations
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Overall business goal assessments are often based on hard data and usually refer to the work of the team as a whole, so they tend to be impersonal to a degree. But personal evaluations, when you home in on an individual’s performance, can be challenging and often emotional for the individuals involved.
Here are a few tips to help personal evaluations go more smoothly.
Be Specific
It is important to be very specific when giving feedback so that the person knows where to focus their energy, rather than just being given a general feeling that they are underperforming.
Don’t Forget Praise
While evaluations are a time to identify and remedy problems, they are also a time to celebrate hard work and wins and thank the person for their work over the year. Noting strengths and achievements should be both one of the first and one of the last things done during an evaluation.
Suggest Solutions
Even when evaluations highlight areas for improvement, they can be a positive experience if they result in tangible solutions to be implemented and leave the team member feeling like they have the support of the company to improve and move forward.
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Listen
Personal evaluations should be a two-way conversation and there should be space for the team member to provide feedback on their work environment, challenges, and what they need from the company in order to give their best performance.
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