How to Launch a Goals Program

In this section, we'll be covering recommended Goal Methodologies that you can utilize and deploy to your company. Please review all the following sections carefully. Each of the chapters are broken down into separate articles, which are linked in the table of contents below.

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Building a successful, company-wide goals program doesn’t happen overnight. But by developing helpful resources and partnering with business leaders early in the process, you can craft the right program for your unique business needs.

5.1 Start with a Training Session

Not all employees may be familiar with the goal methodology that you’re rolling out. To drive successful adoption of your goal program, schedule a training session for all employees on this topic.

We recommend covering:

• The purpose of your goal program
• Best practices for creating goals
• How to incorporate goals into existing workloads
• When to track & update goal

5.2 Build a process around it

To drive excitement and participation in your goals program, we recommend a goals kick-off with an email campaign, posters, rewards, and anything else to energize your employees and raise awareness. Let employees know when goals should be created, reviewed with managers, and updated. You can even block time for these goal milestones in the company-wide calendar. Reward teams that are the first to create their goals — this will drive some friendly competition and motivate folks!

5.3 Automate whenever possible

Automation helps reduce employee effort needed to track goals. Reflektive, for instance, integrates directly into workflows, allowing team members to view goal details in their favorite apps and add agenda items to 1:1s. This helps to keep employees on track and drive goal transparency across teams too.

5.4 Track and Report on Goals

Prior to launching your goals program, ensure that your reporting tool captures crucial goal data, such as completion rate and number of goals. This will help you track the success of your goals program, and ensure that your workforce is using goals appropriately. We also recommend sharing out goal progress and important KPIs on a regular basis with company leaders. Be open to implementing changes from leaders or based on goal adoption at your company.

5.5 Suggested Launch Project Plan for Goals

• STEP 1 - Define what success looks like and how you’ll measure it
  Some success examples include, “All employees have one or more goals created” or, “We achieve 80% of our company-wide goals this quarter”
  
  
• STEP 2 - Pick a goal methodology and goal-setting cadence that works for your company
  
  • Goal Methodology: Conduct research on the pro’s and con’s of different goal methodologies, and what is needed to execute them well. Once you have a recommendation, share it with company leadership for their input.
  • Goal-Setting Cadence: Determine the right frequency for employees to update their goals. We recommend a quarterly cadence for most companies, but smaller companies may need to update their objectives more frequently.
    
    
• STEP 3 - Identify who your key partners will be to launch this program
  Having other business leaders as champions for this program will help motivate managers and employees to follow. Find those leaders across your organization that can become ambassadors on this initiative
  
  
• STEP 4 - Pick a launch day and work on your timeline
  A good practice is to pick a date and work your way backwards to identify key milestones you’ll need to hit to make that deadline achievable. Recommended milestones include:
  
  
  • Schedule a managers training session: Managers will ensure that their team and their direct reports create relevant, achievable goals. Ensure that managers are fully trained on the importance of goals, your selected goal methodology, and how to create and update goals in your performance management solution.
  • Prepare email communications and campaign assets ahead of time: An integrated promotion campaign will help managers and employees understand the value of the program and will help drive adoption!
    
    
• STEP 5 - Track progress and communicate results!
  Make sure you use a people analytics platform, such as Reflektive’s People Intelligence solution, to keep track of goal numbers and goal completion rates across your company.
  
  
• STEP 6 - Iterate, Iterate, Iterate
  Identify areas of opportunity, and continuously evolve your processes, to adapt to your changing workforce. We recommend getting feedback from company leaders, managers, and employees as you optimize your goals program.

• Goal Methodology: Conduct research on the pro’s and con’s of different goal methodologies, and what is needed to execute them well. Once you have a recommendation, share it with company leadership for their input.
• Goal-Setting Cadence: Determine the right frequency for employees to update their goals. We recommend a quarterly cadence for most companies, but smaller companies may need to update their objectives more frequently.
  

• Schedule a managers training session: Managers will ensure that their team and their direct reports create relevant, achievable goals. Ensure that managers are fully trained on the importance of goals, your selected goal methodology, and how to create and update goals in your performance management solution.
• Prepare email communications and campaign assets ahead of time: An integrated promotion campaign will help managers and employees understand the value of the program and will help drive adoption!