Session 5:
Manager Onboarding and Toolkit for Success
← Revisit Session 4 | Jump to Session 6 →
You know how long your company’s goal cycles should be, and you’ve communicated your program out to the company. Now, it’s time to roll out and onboard your managers.
Tip:
Useful resources ahead!
1. Automate Your Goal Cycle Setup
You now have to set up your cycle. If you are doing it manually, you will need to clearly define the timing, duration, review, and approval steps for the cycle. Furthermore, you will need to ensure the data is properly updated and reported to ensure success.
If you’ve chosen to use performance management software to manage your company goals process, your tech can handle this part and save your precious time and effort.
Here’s how this process looks in the CARROTS PH platform — just a few clicks, and your goal cycle is good to go.
As part of the employee training and onboarding, include the goal process and mechanics with stakeholders including the executives and managers. Furthermore, have all employees practice the goal setting and updating process.
If you can request your tech vendor to provide you a demo setup or a pilot period that can be of great help to you and your employees to be truly familiar with your goals cycle. Having a test environment is especially helpful if you are a large and diverse company.
Resource: Your managers might be familiar with SMART goals and OKRs. If they aren’t accustomed to working in the frameworks, don’t worry we can help. Get our Goal-Setting Template.
It is extremely helpful to inform every one of the goal cycle timelines – the start, the end and the period in-between. Thus, we recommend each employee to set reminders for the key dates in your goal cycle.
For the first year of the rollout, it helps that you send company-wide emails during the key dates of your goal cycle to really get people fluent on the new goals process. You would like to help get everyone on-track.
Success can be achieved a day at a time. To get a better understanding of employee’s progress, you and all managers have to track goal status during weekly 1-1s with direct reports. However, be aware, that weekly 1-1s is a big challenge for most managers for various reasons. It is seldom adhered to if done manually.
Using a performance management software can help you and your managers achieve consistent and total visibility of goals status and progress with clean and updated dashboards and reports. Knowing where the gaps and issues are will help managers prioritize 1-1s and make it easy for them.
Goals overview dashboard in the CARROTS platform
For example, CARROTS' goal-setting functionality allows admins and managers to easily see goals performance, monthly leader board, and the top or bottom goals. In addition, the dashboard allows managers to see the upcoming issues and red flags that require attention and discussions during the 1-1s.
5. Goal Setting Culture
The most effective way to make goals work is to make goals and performance part of your company culture. When an employee faces a problem or is showing poor performance on one or two goals, having a quick discussion with his/her manager should be the norm in your workplace.
Resource: If your managers are not familiar about goals for their 1-on-1s, help them with this Goaling Approach Manager Framework that makes it easy to bring goals into the conversation.
Including tips for how to prepare for 1-on-1s, how to frame the discussion, and how to follow up, this is one of our most popular 1-on-1 guides. (You can check out all three guides for managers here.)
6. Goal-Setting Tips for Success
Your employees will feel overwhelmed in writing goals especially if this is new to them.
To help you and your employees out, below are some tips from CARROTS PH’s survey and employee interview data:
💎 Goals are not dynamic: Goals are a work in progress. However, goals should not be changed by anyone and at any time one feels like it. Goals may change due to valid situations and changes in business priorities. The strategic intent is for employees to pursue goals and work diligently with their manager and team to contribute to the company. Be aware that not all goals will be achieved but that’s part of the process.
✅ Goals are not just a management or administrative burden: Goals shouldn’t be a checklist of things to do. Use goals to help you become better professionally and personally and be part of your development.
🏡 Focus and prioritize. First things first. You need to align with stakeholders the most important mission for the company and help managers focus on the goals needed to get there. Having focus on a few but important goals helps employees adopt the goal setting process faster.
Accepting failures as part of the process will provide the most valuable learnings.
Each goal cycle is an opportunity for growth and development. Every manager can seize and prioritize this opportunity for individual and team development. Every employee across all levels is given this opportune moment to look at themselves and learn.
This may sound difficult or a lot of work to track! Don’t worry - Carrots PH can help. Check out our Employee Experience Platform overview to learn more. With these resources, you’re well on your way towards implementing a goal cycle that will make a lasting and impactful change in your company’s culture and growth.
Give yourself a pat on the back! Then join us next session to learn how to measure the success of your goal cycle, and iterate toward perfection.
See you soon for session 6!
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