A Simple HR Guide to Setting Clear Objectives

I was probably worse at being appraised … I remember my boss asking me what the highlights of the year were for me, and I replied by telling him that that was his job to tell me, he was after all my boss. After 10 minutes or so he gave up on the appraisal and we went to the pub instead.

Good objectives are important

So, I’m not really a fan of appraisals, and I don’t care how whizzy the system is, or whether it’s 360, 180 or whatever today’s gimmick might be. I do think good objectives are important though, and it surprises me that even the brightest of managers often seem unable to articulate these properly.

Consider an example, for a sales person:

“Your objective this year is to improve your sales performance.”

i.e. ‘do better’. Nothing in itself wrong with that, but it’s an extremely blunt instrument – it would be difficult to assess the success or otherwise of the individual with any degree of accuracy. If I were to put my coaching hat on, I would ask the person setting this objective some pertinent questions:

• Can you quantify how much you want the sales performance to improve? Are there higher business objectives you need this person to mirror, e.g. growth targets or upcoming marketing campaigns?

• What type of sales are we looking for an improvement in? New clients? Clients re-signing? Clients increasing in value?

• Is there a timescale attached to this objective, perhaps based around planned marketing?

• How often will you review progress against the objective?

At the end of my interrogation, I would expect the objective to ‘improve sales’ to be rather more measurable, which of course is the key to a well-written objective. To do this I would expect the overall objective to be split into sub-objectives, covering the key elements we expect the sales person to deliver and the phasing of these.

By being clear what we expect and when, we are better able to measure the success of the individual, and that might be important for pay reviews or bonuses … or, if the person isn’t delivering, perhaps even the exit process.

It is important of course for objectives to be realistically achievable, and that includes providing the necessary support for staff to achieve their goals.

‘SMART’ objectives

The old acronym for writing objectives is ‘SMART’, which stands for (depending on who you talk to) Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. And that’s how we train people to write good objectives – by checking whether all of the requirements of SMART are satisfied for each objective, and if they aren’t, to adjust the objective until SMART is fully achieved.

Objectives are best set and revisited several times during a year. In the old days we’d set them once and then largely forget about them until preparing for the next year’s appraisal/objectives. By this time the world had changed, some objectives were no longer relevant, some had been done and new ones had emerged.

Objectives should not be a ‘once a year’ exercise

Objectives are to some extent dynamic. Using our example the core objective (improve sales) will be impacted by other events, not of all of which may be known at the start of the year, another good reason to revisit them regularly. I might have expected overall sales growth of 10% at the start of the year, but if I invest an additional £200K in better lead generation and additional sales support, the growth number I expect might feel like 25% now.

By revisiting objectives regularly we can check on progress, on relevance and we can add and remove objectives. There’s no harm in increasing objectives mid-year either, again making sure that expectations are reasonable and reflective of relevant circumstances.

Relevance and reasonableness are key to well-written objectives

My final word on objectives is around reasonableness of expectations and the provision of support to set the scene for success. It would be probably unreasonable for example to expect sales growth while ceasing previous investment in lead generation – however good are sales staff are, they need the leads to start the process.

Objectives need to reflect the overall environment in which they exist – only by doing so will they meet the Achievable and Relevance tests in SMART.

HR support from Omny

Whether you need help with appraisals or need to train your managers to write better objectives, myHRdept outsourced HR packages can help. Most of our support packages include a bank of support hours you can use to help meet these needs. Our fully outsourced packages ensure up to date contracts and HR policies and provide access to experienced HR people to help resolve people issues arising. We are not, and never will be, a call-centre.