As we get closer to the end of the calendar year, managers need to make sure they’re helping each employee with their goals. Regardless of whether you utilize goals in a performance management system, you want your staff to have a plan for growth. Goals do not have to include promotions or changes in employment; remember, not everyone gets promoted or changes jobs every year.
But if we’re not focusing on growth and helping our employees do the same, we’re stagnating. Why would we want that for our staff? It’s better for them and for us to encourage a culture of continuous learning. We should all include some aspect of learning in our plans for the year—none of us know as much as we’d like to think we do.
Do you know your employees’ interests? For those that don’t seem to relate to their current roles, can you find a tie-in? Have you encouraged/required your staff to come up with at least one growth goal each? When presented with the idea, is it clear that you’re not talking just about career ladder growth, but growth intellectually?
I’ve written previously about finding staff strengths and sharing them with your team. Do the same with goals. Find ways for each to share something they’ve learned with each other. Can your staff trial a new process/procedure to make sure it works before it’s rolled out to all? Can they find/suggest ways to solve an identified problem? Can they meet with someone from another department to promote cross-team work? Can they interview a client/customer to determine what’s going well or what needs to be improved?
There are all sorts of ways for us to reach out, try something new and learn from it. Promoting this as a rewarding aspect of the job will help maintain a culture of continuous improvement.
Work with your staff on their goals throughout the year; don’t leave them as a New Year’s resolutions that are forgotten by February.
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