Looking for a list of performance goals and objectives for your company?
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Growing a business is no easy task.
But if you implement clear-cut performance goals and objectives across your organization, it’s not going to be that hard.
They’ll help focus your efforts on areas that actually matter!
So what exactly are these performance goals and why do you need them?
More importantly, how do you establish and track them?
In this article, we’ll cover what performance goals and objectives are, why you need them and highlight 9 essential ones for your business.
We’ll also give you 3 practical tips to take your performance plan to a higher level!
Let’s get started!
What Are Performance Goals And Objectives?
Performance goals and objectives are targets set by companies and team leaders that cover their operations. Usually, these goals and objectives are established according to the company’s mission or vision.
But wait…aren’t goals and objectives the same thing?
Nope.
Objectives are the steps you need to take in order to achieve your goals.
Essentially, you complete your objectives to meet your goal.
- The squad’s goal: Secure the plaque
- Their objective: Distract other participants
Similarly, if your company’s goal was to increase revenue, your objective could be “increasing sales.”
Benefits of Setting Performance Goals And Objectives?
People establish performance goals and objectives to track their company’s progress accurately.
How does that happen?
With a goal in sight, it’s easy to focus on areas that help your company grow.
Additionally, tracking your goals with care can help you identify problems and address them quickly.
For example, let’s say your goal was to reduce customer acquisition cost (CAC) by 20% but you could only reduce it by 10%. After analyzing this result, you’ll be able to know what went wrong and take measures to fix those areas — like reducing spend on non-profitable marketing strategies.
Setting team goals also help managers or team leaders conduct unbiased employee reviews.
How?
You can evaluate employees by holding them accountable for their performance over their goals and objectives. This way, your evaluation criteria is unbiased and transparent.
The benefit?
Fair assessments create room for trust and build a strong relationship between managers and employees.
Additionally, when employees are part of a fair working environment, you can easily motivate them to perform well.
Related: Performance Review Templates!
9 Performance Goals Examples
You now know what performance goals and objectives are and why you need them.
But which ones should you set and track in your company?
Here are some key performance goals and objectives (and the metrics to measure them):
1. Marketing and sales goals
Any marketer needs to set measurable and attainable goals to be successful.
These goals will help the company grow, expand their customer base and gain more revenue easily.
Here are three objectives you could set to achieve your marketing and sales goals:
Objective #1: Increase website conversions by a set percentage
A conversion occurs when someone performs a desired action on your website, like making a purchase or signing up for your newsletter.
How does this help?
Apart from generating qualified leads and more profits, increased conversions mean a larger customer database and a better understanding of customer’s needs.
For example, if you tweak your website’s landing page and find out that more customers are signing up as a result of that modification — you’ll have an idea of what attracts them. You can then employ this across other marketing channels for more conversions!
How do you track this?
Conversion rate = (number of converted visitors / total website visitors) * 100%
For example, if the total number of conversions is 2000 and 18000 users visited your website, then the conversion rate is 11.11%.
Objective #2: Increase monthly web traffic
Monthly web traffic refers to the number of users visiting your company’s website.
However, most companies don’t track web traffic by itself. You usually compare it with other metrics, like the average time spent by visitors or purchases made by them on the website.
How does this help?
An increase in monthly web traffic could mean:
- Your online advertisements are working
- A chance at gaining more qualified leads
- More opportunities to analyze customer habits
How do you track this?
You can use web analytics tools like Google Analytics to estimate your monthly web traffic.
It generates a complete breakdown of customers grouped by region, state or cities. You can then compare these reports and analyze them to improve your marketing and sales activities.
Objective #3: Reduce sales cycle length
Sales cycle length is the length of time between initial contact and closing a lead.
How does this help?
Similarly, reducing your sales cycle length helps you avoid wasting your time and resources. You can utilize these saved resources to generate more qualified leads instead!
How do you track this?
Just follow these steps:
- Step 1: Add up the total number of days it took to close every lead
- Step 2: Divide it by the number of deals closed
For example, if Lead A took 15 days, Lead B took 12 days and Lead C took 21 days then:
- Total number of days: 48
- Number of leads: 3
- Average sales cycle length: 48/3 = 16 days
2. Financial goals
You can define financial goals and performance targets that’ll improve the financial health of your organization.
These goals can vary from increasing your cash flow to reducing production costs.
Here are three examples of financial objectives you could set:
Objective #1: Increase cash flow
Cash flow is simply a measure of the money that flows in and out of your business.
You need to know your cash flow to ensure that your business does not run out of working capital!
How does this help?
An increase in cash flow usually indicates higher revenue generation.
While greater revenue helps you take the next step to explore new business opportunities, you can also:
- Raise salaries
- Expand your business in terms of infrastructure
- Hire experts for planning projects and guiding your team in the right direction
How do you track this?
To determine cash flow, add your various cash variables and plug them into this formula:
Cash flow = cash from operating activities +(-) cash from investing activities + cash from financing activities
Objective #2: Reduce average costs
The per-unit cost of production of goods is referred to as average costs.
It includes all the fixed as well as variable costs of production – no matter how small they are.
It can even be something as simple as lamination:
How does this help?
Reducing average costs can increase your profit margins in the long-term.
Profits can then be used to increase product or service quality — which in turn helps generate more customers!
How do you track this?
Average cost per unit = (total variable cost + fixed cost) / quantity of units produced
For example:
- Total variable costs: $2,440
- Total fixed costs: $11,000
- Total units produced: 5000
- Average cost per unit = 2440+11000/5000 = $2.69
Objective #3: Increase revenue per employee
Revenue per employee is the amount of income each employee is generating for the company.
How does this help?
Higher revenue/employee translates to better profit margins.
And that creates opportunities for incentives, bonuses, or even better pay for employees.
How do you track this?
Revenue per employee = Company’s total revenue / current number of employees
For example, if the company size is 200 and the revenue generated is $8.4M annually, then revenue per employee is $42K.
3. Human resources goals
Human resources goals focus on utilizing your employees to their optimum potential.
You can set goals focused on learning new techniques, coaching them over their strengths and weaknesses or improving employee engagement.
Here are three objectives to help you set such goals:
Objective #1: Reduce employee turnover rate
Employee turnover rate is the percentage of employees that leave an organization during a certain period of time.
How does this help?
By reducing your employee turnover rate, you can avoid problems like:
- Overworking your employees due to staff shortages
- Reduced employee motivation
- Decreased profitability as you’ll have to spend time and money hiring and training new employees
How do you track this?
To determine the employee turnover rate, just use this formula:
Employee turnover = (number of people who left the company during a specific period/ total employees during that period) * 100
For example, if 20 people left the company in July when the total employees were 1000, your employee turnover rate would be 2%.
Objective #2: Increase employee engagement
Employee engagement refers to the passion and commitment employees have towards their job.
How does this help?
Increased employee engagement enhances your employees’ connection with their job and company. And when that happens, they’ll feel supported and valued. This drives them towards better job motivation and dedication — which, in turn, translates to productivity.
How do you track this?
There are multiple ways you can determine employee engagement.
You can conduct surveys, one-on-one meetings or use employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) to measure this goal.
Objective #3: Lower cost per hire
Cost per hire is the average money you spend hiring human resources.
This includes money spent on job boards, recruitment and assessment software, referral incentives, hiring drives, etc.
How does this help?
Calculating the total cost per hire provides an insight into your hiring budget which you can use for better budget planning in the future. You’ll also be able to use this data to eliminate useless expenditure in the hiring process.
For example, switching to telephone interviews from on-site interviews for a customer service representative role not only gives you an idea of how good they are on the phone, but it also saves you money too.
Plus, it’s a great option for remote teams looking to hire employees from across the globe!
How do you track this?
Cost per hire = (internal recruiting cost + external recruiting cost) / total hired
Internal recruiting costs include hiring manager’s salaries, planning interview drives and referral bonuses. Money spent on hiring technology and advertisements make up your external recruiting costs.
3 Tips To Establish Performance Goals And Objectives
Setting realistic goals can be challenging and you could end up being clueless like Jake here:
Luckily, we have a few tips to help you go about it:
1. Define SMART goals
How do you implement smart performance goals?
Simple: with SMART goals!
But what are they?
Setting SMART goals is a goal setting process that’ll help you create efficient goals in no time. Make your goals SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely.
The acronym can be split into:
- Specific: Define clear goals, leaving no room for ambiguity and misinterpretation
- Measurable: Goals should be easily trackable with measurement metrics
- Attainable: Achieving goals should be possible
- Relevant: While goals should be relevant to the company’s vision, it should also help the career development of employees
- Timely: They should have a definitive time frame
Here are some examples of SMART team goals:
- Increase leads by 20% before the start of the next financial quarter
- Reduce employee turnover rate to 5% within six months
- Reduce average cost by 8% before the end of the current month
2. Involve your team in the goal setting process
Why should you involve your team in the goal setting process?
Goal setting gives employees an insight into the overall strategy and their role in it. They can also give their inputs, ask questions, and express concerns regarding problems they could face. Involving your team in the goal setting process is a surefire way to boost employee engagement.
How?
It gives employees an insight into the goal strategy and their role in it. They can also give their inputs, ask questions, and express concerns regarding any problems they could face.
Additionally, employees can structure and prioritize goals around their attributes too — making sure that they’re able to tackle them efficiently.
And the benefit?
Making goal setting a collaborative effort will motivate employees to work harder to achieve their goals. It also eliminates any lack of clarity regarding the goals.
3. Use tools to implement and track your goals
Keeping track of your goals and objectives with a pen and paper is a recipe for disaster. It’s risky, inefficient and incredibly difficult to manage.
ClickUp is the highest-rated project management tool in the world.
Widely used by 200,000+ teams in companies ranging from startups to giants, it’s the only tool you need to manage your goals and collaborate with your team.
Whether it’s assigning tasks or tracking the progress towards your goals — ClickUp’s got everything covered!
Here’s how ClickUp helps you track your team goals:
1. Create Goals and add multiple Targets
ClickUp’s Goals are high-level containers that can be broken down into smaller, measurable Targets.
In ClickUp, Targets = your objectives
For example, if the Goal for team leaders is to increase employee engagement, then their Targets could be “conduct 10 team building activities” and “get employee feedback over their assignments.”
But how do you achieve these Goals and Targets?
To complete a Goal, you just need to complete its Targets!
Teams can easily update each Target according to their progress. ClickUp then auto-calculates your Goal’s progress percentage based on these Targets.
What’s more?
ClickUp lets you use a variety of units to measure a Target!
You can choose from:
- Number: A range of numbers from 0 to infinity
- True/False: Only two possible outcomes — done or not done
- Currency: An amount of money (best suited for budgeted team goals)
- Tasks: A task or set of tasks that should be completed to achieve the Target
Sort Goals into neat folders to make things organized and easily accessible. For example, you can create a folder solely for your Scrum project’s Goals!
2. Powerful Dashboards for visual overviews
With numerous goals to tackle, how do you keep track of them easily?
By using ClickUp’s Dashboards!
Dashboards are like the mission control centers for your entire team.
Dashboards give you quick visual overviews of any project, like your Agile software development project, with various graphs like:
- Velocity charts: Highlights the completion rate of your tasks
- Burndown charts: Shows the amount of work remaining in a project
- Burnup charts: Displays the amount of work already completed in a project
- Cumulative flow charts: View how the project is progressing over time
For example, a glance at your Cumulative chart is all you need to instantly know how your project’s doing!
But these aren’t all of ClickUp’s features!
At ClickUp, we relate to Gina here:
Which is exactly why this powerful tool also gives you other features, like:
- Team Reporting: Gain insight into your team’s performance with detailed reports
- Project Management Automation: Automate project processes to save time
- Multiple Assignees: Assign multiple members to any task quickly
- Assigned Comments: Create tasks out of comments to ensure that they don’t go unnoticed
- Pulse: Know which tasks you’re team is focused on at the moment
Conclusion
Establishing realistic goals and objectives will help you keep track of your company’s performance and efficiency
And when you align them to employee objectives, it boosts their motivation and productivity –– helping you grow a successful business.
Defining good goals isn’t enough… You need to track them too!
Since goal setting tools like ClickUp help you set and track your goals easily, why not sign up for ClickUp today?
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